Antibiotics (Intensive Farms)

Debate between Andrew Smith and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith]

I had just quoted Sir Liam Donaldson, on

“a death warrant for a future patient”,

as a result of the overuse of antibiotics, and I had complained that the British Government have routinely ignored the link between antibiotics in intensive farming and the public health threat. I was about to cite the current chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, on the growing problems of resistant strains of bugs, as well as the Health Protection Agency in November. It was striking that the message focused 100% on over-prescribing by doctors, with zero mention of the use of antibiotics in the livestock industry.

Similarly, when I tabled a parliamentary question to the Department of Health on what funding it provided for research into drug-resistant bacteria, the answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), explicitly mentioned hospital-acquired infections, but not the use of antibiotics in farming. I was encouraged, however, by a reply from the then Secretary of State for Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), when I asked him about the link between E. coli resistance to antibiotics and record antibiotic usage on farms. He said:

“Indeed, I was interested to see analysis some years ago of the extent of antibiotic resistance in hospitals in the Netherlands. Resistance was clearly much more prevalent in parts of Friesland where there was much greater antibiotic usage in farming. I therefore completely understand, and my colleagues in DEFRA understand this too. Just as we are looking for the responsible and appropriate prescribing of antibiotics in the health service, my colleagues feel strongly about the proper use of antibiotics in farming.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2012; Vol. 548, c. 842.]

However, since then, we have had a near complete clean sweep of Ministers at both Departments—the Department of Health and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising a very important subject. Is his argument, at least in part, that the collaboration cross-departmentally, which should take place through the chief scientific advisers committee, is not happening, or is what they are considering simply not being taken proper notice of?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I suspect that that is part of the problem, but as I will come to later, I think it is also the case that the agribusiness sector in this country has had a disproportionate impact on policy. That is a point that I hope to impress during the debate.

As I was saying, there has been a near clean sweep of Ministers at both Departments, so this debate provides an opportunity to clarify Government policy. The Government are right to insist on better infection control in hospitals and changes in the way that antibiotics are prescribed by doctors. However, other than the brief answer that I quoted from the former Secretary of State, there has been virtually nothing from the Government that could in any way encourage vets and farmers to be similarly prudent. Not surprisingly, therefore, there has been little progress; on the contrary, analysis by the Soil Association of the Government’s statistics indicates that the overall use of antibiotics per animal on UK farms increased by 18% between 2000 and 2010, while the farm use of third and fourth-generation cephalosporins—drugs described by the Health Protection Agency as hospital workhorses—increased by over 500%.

Furthermore, recently published data from the Veterinary Medicines Directorate show that sales of fluoroquinolone antibiotics for use in veterinary medicine over the past two years have been 70% higher than they were in 2000. It is worth noting that when fluoroquinolones were first licensed for use in poultry in the UK in 1993, there was no registered antibiotic-resistant campylobacter in people who had not been treated with the antibiotics, but by 2007, almost half—46%—the campylobacter food poisoning cases caused by the most common strain were resistant. It is worth noting also that in 2008, the European Food Safety Authority said:

“A major source of human exposure to fluoroquinolone resistance via food appears to be poultry”.

Clearly, antimicrobials should be used to treat sick animals, and I do not think anyone would argue against that.