UK Government must restrict farm antibiotics after Brexit

The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics is calling on the Government to ensure that its Repeal Bill, published this week, fully converts EU legislation controlling farm antibiotic use into UK law. Any substantive changes to policies and standards should be made by primary legislation only, requiring a full and proper role for scientific and parliamentary scrutiny. The Government should also work with other EU countries urgently to put an end to all routine preventative farm antibiotic use.

Cóilín Nunan, of the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, said: “Scientists and medics are warning we face a post-antibiotic era unless we take urgent action to restrict and reduce antibiotic use in both human and veterinary medicine [1]. The Government should be moving without further delay to ban routine preventative farm antibiotic use, just as several other European countries have already done [2]. Any attempt to use Brexit and the Repeal Bill as a backdoor means to avoiding implementation of the highest standards would be hugely irresponsible in an era of superbugs.”

In March 2016, the European Parliament voted by 95% in favour of new veterinary medicines regulations that would ban mass medication with antibiotics for groups of animals where no disease has been diagnosed within the group [3]. However, the ban has not yet become EU law because the regulations are still being discussed by European Union Member States. The British Government claims to support the proposed ban, but refuses to take regulatory action before the EU regulations are agreed.

These ongoing delays in the implementation of the new EU veterinary medicines regulations may mean that no ban on preventative mass medication with antibiotics will be included in UK law when the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019. The UK Government has not yet committed to banning preventative mass medication, and is instead relying on voluntary initiatives and industry pledges to reduce farm antibiotic use. The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics argues that either the Government must commit the UK now to legally binding standards, or to compliance with EU standards via the Repeal Bill.

Notes to editors

[1]    http://www.saveourantibiotics.org/news/news/letter-uks-top-medics-call-on-government-to-ban-the-routine-use-of-antibiotics-in-uk-farming/
[2]    The Netherlands and the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden do not permit preventative group antibiotic treatments. Such treatments remain legal in the UK and in most of Europe.
[3]    https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/news/meps-adopt-new-veterinary-medicine-rules

The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics is an alliance of health, medical, environmental and animal welfare groups working to stop the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming. It was founded by Compassion in World Farming, the Soil Association and Sustain in 2009. Its vision is a world in which human and animal health and wellbeing are protected by food and farming systems that do not rely routinely on antibiotics and related drugs.