Antibiotics Archives | Sustainable Food Trust

UK falls behind the EU on farm antibiotic standards

Imogen Crossland — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 12:00:00 +0000

In a press release published today, the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has drawn attention to a developing divergence between food production standards in the UK and the EU. From today, livestock farmers in the EU’s remaining 27 member countries will face greater restrictions on the use of antibiotics than farmers in the UK.

Intensive livestock farmers in the EU will no longer be permitted to use antibiotics routinely or to compensate for poor hygiene or animal welfare. Such use will, however, continue to be allowed in the UK.

As concern has grown about the alarming rise of antibiotic-resistant infections globally, farmers in the UK have managed to reduce their use of antibiotics by 49% since 2014 and many farmers are continuing to go further. Yet use per pig in the UK is still 250% higher than in the Netherlands and Denmark, two major pork-producing countries.

Of even greater concern to UK consumers – while the EU has also banned the importation of meat from countries like the US and Australia, where the use of growth-promoting antibiotics long-banned in the EU and UK is still permitted – the UK government has so far refused to follow suit. This inevitably gives rise to concern that the government gives a higher priority to rushed trade deals than to the safety of UK consumers.

This is an issue which we exposed in our report, ‘Maximum Growth: Whatever the Cost’ in December 2020.

SFT Policy Director, Richard Young said, ‘Antibiotic resistance is a major, developing problem caused by the overuse of antibiotics in both human and veterinary medicine. The Sustainable Food Trust fully supports calls for the UK to keep its veterinary medicines legislation fully in line with the EU. This would help to protect UK consumers and it would also help to prevent UK farmers being undercut by imports produced in other countries with antibiotics used to make animals grow faster. If this is allowed to happen, decades of hard-won progress could go into reverse. UK farmers could be forced to increase their use of antibiotics, in order to compete and stay in business, rather than reduce them further, which is what needs to happen.’

Press Release

From today the UK will have weaker farm antibiotic regulations than the EU. Farmers on the continent will no longer be allowed to give preventative group antibiotic treatments or use antibiotics to mask poor living conditions and standards for farm animals. This will remain legal in the UK. The Alliance to Save our Antibiotics says this threatens to undermine recent improvements in the UK and increases the risk of antibiotic resistance.

New legislation in the EU has banned all forms of routine antibiotic use for farm animals. They have also banned imports of meat, dairy, fish and eggs that have been produced using antibiotics to stimulate rapid growth in the animals.

Antibiotic resistance is increasing at a faster rate than previously realised and, as reported in The Lancet in 2019, it was directly responsible for the deaths of more than one and a quarter million people worldwide and linked with the deaths of nearly five million people. The overuse of antibiotics in humans and farm animals is to blame for this crisis. Worldwide about two thirds of antibiotics are used in livestock.

The new EU legislation was agreed in 2018, and since then the UK government has repeatedly said that it largely supported the new regulations and would introduce similar laws here. However, over three years later the Government has still not published its own legislative proposals for ending excessive farm antibiotic use. This leaves the UK exposed and means that rules here are weaker. It remains legal in the UK to:

give antibiotics to farm animals routinely, rather than when they are sick or have an infection
give preventative group treatments to farm animals
give antibiotics to farm animals to compensate for inadequate welfare standards, lack of care or poor hygiene
import animal foods produced with antibiotic growth promoters

Campaigners are calling for the UK government to honour its repeated commitments and the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics (ASOA) has written to Environment Secretary George Eustice MP urging the Government to act swiftly to improve the UK’s farm antibiotic laws in line with the EU.

Cóilín Nunan ASOA Scientific Advisor said: ‘British farmers have voluntarily reduced their antibiotic use by 50% in recent years. But much larger cuts can still be achieved if the Government introduces new laws ending preventative antibiotic group treatments and increasing minimum animal health and welfare standards. On the other hand, if the government pursues a trade policy which cuts tariffs on the importation of meat and dairy produced with extremely high antibiotic use, including the use of antibiotic growth promoters, then in order to compete, British farmers could be compelled to reduce their own animal health and welfare standards and increase their use of antibiotics.’

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Massive use of ionophore antibiotics in poultry production

Alice Frost — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000

With antibiotic resistance increasing globally, factory farmers have been under pressure to reduce their use of antibiotics. Headline figures suggest they’ve made significant progress, but an investigation by the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has found that although the use of the most medically important antibiotics has been reduced by chicken farmers, they have massively increased their use of other antibiotics classed as ‘feed additives’ rather than antibiotics to maintain their very intensive systems. These also pose threats to our health and to the environment.

Figures obtained by the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics via a Freedom of Information request show that the poultry industry’s use of ionophores has increased by 33% in five years, from 212 tonnes in 2012 to a record 281 tonnes in 2017. During the same period, British Poultry Council farmers have cut their use of antibiotics used in human medicine from 82 to 14 tonnes.

Ionophores are not currently used in human medicine due to concerns about their toxicity, but several scientific studies have suggested they, or very closely related antibiotics, may have the potential to be developed in the future as effective treatments for the serious, and often lethal infection Clostridium difficile. Very few antibiotics are currently available to treat this disease.

According to the Norwegian government’s Scientific Committee for Food Safety, there is also evidence that the use of ionophores in poultry can increase resistance to some antibiotics used in human medicine, although further research is required to confirm the finding.

Ionophores are routinely added to the feed of most intensively farmed chickens to prevent the serious intestinal disease coccidiosis, and no veterinary prescription is required.

Cóilín Nunan of the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics said: “Coccidiosis only occurs when chickens ingest chicken droppings, but that is unavoidable in intensive systems where tens of thousands of birds are kept permanently indoors in a single shed with a space allowance of less than an A4 sheet of paper per bird.”

The Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE) is concerned about the overuse of ionophores in poultry production and has called for the drugs to be made prescription-only, as is the case for all other antibiotics used in European farming. The FVE has said that ionophores, and other medicines used to control coccidiosis, should ultimately be phased out, partly through making “necessary changes in management”.

Cóilín Nunan said: “We fully support the call from European veterinarians for these drugs to be made prescription-only to limit indiscriminate use but, as they are suggesting, much more fundamental change is required. It should no longer be permitted to keep chickens and other birds in conditions that are so cramped and unhygienic that this disease is unavoidable. All farm animals should be kept in conditions which minimise stress, disease and the use of toxic drugs.”

Because ionophores are toxic, there are also concerns about residues in food and the environmental impact of spreading chicken manure on land. Food residues are usually well below legal concentrations, but residues above these limits are regularly found in a small percentage of tested eggs and chickens. Most of the ionophores fed to poultry are excreted by the birds, so significant quantities can remain in manure spread on land, and scientific studies show this could have an impact on soil and aquatic organisms.

The Alliance welcomes the efforts the poultry industry has made in recent years to implement large cuts in its use of medically important antibiotics, and there is already evidence this is helping to cut rates of antibiotic resistance in poultry. Unfortunately, the industry has increased its use of ionophores to such an extent that there has been no overall fall in the use of antibiotics.

Even before the recent increases, ionophores were by far the most widely used antibiotics in poultry, and one possible explanation for their current record use is that the drugs also help control another serious intestinal disease called necrotic enteritis, which was previously partly controlled by higher use of medically important antibiotics.

A second possible explanation is that ionophores have a growth-promoting effect, as do several of the medically important antibiotics. Even though using antibiotics for growth promotion is no longer legal, the use of antibiotics for legal purposes can still promote growth. The reduction in use of some medically important antibiotics known to promote growth may be being compensated for by an increase in ionophore use.

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A tale of two chickens

Anna Kilcooley — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 11:10:00 +0000

Debuting at The True Cost of American Food Conference last week in San Francisco, A Tale of Two Chickens is a short film which illustrates how we are paying a high price for food in hidden ways and why we need true cost accounting in our food and farming systems.

While the shelf price of intensively produced chicken is now cheaper, pound for pound, than bread, this film shows that the hidden costs are far greater.

Created with the Lexicon of Food, the Sustainable Food Trust hopes this film will help people to visualise the problem of food system externalities by comparing the stories of two chickens from two different production systems. One chicken, reared on pasture and organically grown feed, has minimal external impacts and in fact can generate actual benefits. While the other chicken, produced in a factory farm, is associated with many negative impacts which create hidden costs, such as the spread of antibiotic resistance, poor working conditions for staff and the pollution of air, soil and water.

But these hidden costs are not paid by the producer, they are paid by taxpayers and society as a whole. When we buy a cheap chicken we actually pay for it twice, once at the checkout and again through taxes that go towards the subsequent environmental and health care costs. When you add up all these hidden costs, cheaper chicken is not so cheap after all.

But what can we do? The film highlights 6 things that can be done to change this destructive system.

Buy sustainably produced food
Ensure there is access to good food for all
Tax fertiliser and pesticides to discourage their overuse
Incentivise people to eat better
Support local businesses
Treat workers fairly

By calling for these changes, we hope to see a shift towards the creation of a food system that is better for people and the planet.

The message of food’s hidden costs applies to almost all foods and needs to be spread, so please join us in telling people the tale of two chickens.

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In the news: Antibiotic resistance

Imogen Crossland — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:48:00 +0000

This week the Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies has raised a warning call that the threat of antiobiotic resistance is on a par with ‘climate change and terrorism.’ Most of the ensuing discussion has been around the misuse of antibiotics in human health. But there’s a parallel story to be told in the animal world and specifically in relation to the role that vets play in contributing to this problem. The scale of the impact of prophylactic use of antibiotics in intensive farming systems on the development of antibiotic resistance should not be underestimated. Believe it or not around half of all antibiotics used in this country are administered to animals.

At our farm, Bwlchwernen Fawr, we stopped using antiobiotics in the udders of our dairy cows at the end of the 1980s and have restricted their subsequent use only to intramuscular treatment either when the animal is seriously ill, where there is no alternative treatment available, or to prevent suffering on welfare grounds. Our farm records, which span the period before and after this change of practice, show that there hasn’t been a significant change, either in the number of cows who get mastitis or the number of animals that we have had to cull because of persistent infections. This is reflected in the average herd life of our cows which has remained stable. I feel strongly that this restricted use should form the basis of which all farmers use antibiotics in the future, especially after the chief medical officer’s warning.

However, we are a long way from that position at the moment. There is understandable fear amongst many dairy farmers of cutting back on antibiotic use. This is often reinforced by vets and advertisements from the pharmaceutical industry, where there are clearly vested interest in maintaining existing levels of antibiotic use. Most UK veterinary practices derive about half their net income from the sale of drugs, of which the lion’s share is antibiotics, with 90% of UK dairy cows are still treated with prophylactic long acting antibiotics at the end of each lactation.

I listened to a very interesting interview on Radio 5 Live last Monday where Richard Young, who advises the Soil Association on antibiotics use and who now also works for the Sustainable Food Trust, gave the example of how this routine use of antibiotics in intensive dairy farming is creating a perfect reservoir for the transfer of resistant organisms from animals to the human population.

It’s one thing to use antibiotics to save a life, however it’s not acceptable on a routine ‘insurance’ basis.

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