Antimicrobial Resistance

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on securing this debate. My contribution will focus on just the farming aspect of the issue.

I thoroughly agree with the noble Lord that the whole point of this issue is that it is a one-health problem. One of the lessons is that we cannot divide human health from the health of the animals we eat. If animals are kept in a way that requires them to be dosed with antibiotics on a frequent and routine basis, then of course we should expect to affect human health as microbes learn to find ways around being killed.

The problem is very well exemplified in the pig industry, because when piglets are weaned very early, after say just 20 days as opposed to 40 plus days, they are likely to suffer from diarrhoea and lose natural resistance, so of course they are dosed. I praise the pig industry for making efforts to reduce the use of antimicrobials by about 50% in the last two years, which is a pretty big reduction. However, data from the Veterinary Medicines Directorate shows that in 2017, the last year I have data for, the UK pig sector still used about 130 milligrams of antimicrobials per kilogram of pig. Compared to our neighbours in Holland or Denmark, that is still very high. Why is it so high still? I am not sure; perhaps the Minister will know why. In the Dutch and Danish pig sectors, use of antimicrobials is less than half the UK’s use, at 53 milligrams per kilogram in the Netherlands and 46 milligrams per kilogram in Denmark. There is quite a big room for improvement. Moreover, reduction in the use of antimicrobials in the UK pig sector has in part been achieved by relying on extremely high use of zinc oxide in the feed. Perhaps the Minister can tell me whether it is true, but I understand that there is a link between such zinc oxide use and the rise of MRSA.

Turning to chickens, broiler chickens in particular, ionophores are the antimicrobial compounds that specifically target bacterial populations in chicken production. Those of your Lordships who have been around a broiler chicken plant will have needed a strong stomach to do so since they are kept very intensively. Ionophores are routinely added to the feed of the most intensively farmed chickens to prevent the serious intestinal disease coccidiosis. No veterinary prescription is required. This disease occurs when chickens eat other chickens’ droppings, so intensive systems where tens of thousands of birds are kept permanently indoors in overcrowded conditions are likely to need to be dosed frequently.

One of the issues for the Government is that, if Brexit happens, they will be looking at with whom to make trade deals. The Government should consider the effect of making deals with people who are encouraging intensive farming when looking at agricultural trade deals and where our food will come from. I do not think that it is any coincidence that antimicrobial resistance is much higher in the USA when we look at how much of its food comes from intensive farming. The Federation of Veterinarians of Europe is concerned about the overuse of ionophores in poultry production and has called for the drugs to be made prescription-only. I wonder whether that is something that the Government are considering.

I am pleased that the Government have brought in their five-year action plan, but there is an issue that I would like to ask the Minister about this afternoon. The plan fails to give a clear commitment to carry over and incorporate into domestic UK legislation, should we leave the EU, the EU’s recently agreed legislation that bans routine preventive use of antimicrobials. I am particularly worried because a Question was posed in the House of Commons by Kerry McCarthy MP as to whether the Government will ban routine preventive use. The Answer was simply:

“Ministers have confirmed the Government’s intention to implement restrictions on the preventative use of antibiotics in line with new EU legislation”.


That does not sound like a ban to me. There will be a couple of problems with that. First, it will be in conflict with the new five-year plan. Secondly, if we try to export any food products to the EU, they will of course be unacceptable in EU terms. The Government need to come off the fence and say that they will entirely implement the ban as envisaged by the EU.

Finally, I turn to the remarks made at Portcullis House on 13 February by Professor Mark Woolhouse, who is the professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University. He makes the point that, in the context of this, an issue is that the UK Government’s emphasis on actions and research is still happening in silos when it comes to surveillance. The challenge is joining up the surveillance across the human, livestock and environmental sectors. Cross-sectorial transmission studies have been unsuccessful because they are not large enough in scale, and research access to routine surveillance data will be crucial for understanding the spread of AMR. Coming from such an expert, this is a very serious issue, and one that the Government need to address by supporting research that is bold and, as he says, mission orientated, and funding it sufficiently so as not to undermine their five-year action plan.