Farming

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this important debate.

I wish to follow on from what the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) said about trade deals. We know that trade deals, particularly the potential ones with the US, threaten to undermine our high animal welfare standards that we have spent years working so hard to establish. If we allow products that are produced to lower standards—such as hormone-treated beef or chlorine-washed chicken—to become the norm, that will undercut our farmers. This is not about protectionism, but about fairness. Not only are vets and farmers proud of our high animal welfare standards, but the British public are, too. We should not in any way be looking to compromise those.

The UK has already made significant strides in reducing antibiotic use in livestock without compromising animal welfare. Our veterinary and farming sectors have worked together to promote the responsible use of antibiotics. We are setting an example for the rest of the world to follow.

As the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance report in 2024 highlighted, sales and usage of antibiotics in food-producing animals remain low. In fact, the past 10 years has seen a 59% decrease in the use of antibiotics in animals and livestock. Long-term antimicrobial resistance surveillance carried out by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate shows that multi-drug resistance in animals is at its lowest level in a decade. Such encouraging statistics are a product of years of work and dedication between scientists and the farming community. This is a huge public health issue, and we should be ensuring that trade deals do not force our farmers to compete with countries that do not have the same judicious use of antibiotics as we do.

On Saturday, I visited the NFU in Hampshire at Ben Robinson’s farm where, like many lowland farmers, they are about to start lambing. This is the hardest time of the year for sheep farms—I grew up on a sheep farm. Those farmers will be working all day and all night. In farming, the amount of effort, time and work that farmers put in does not always result in profit, because so many factors are out of their control—international disease outbreaks, geopolitical events that put up fertiliser prices, poor weather, changing Government policy, and potential trade deals. I pay tribute to the Farming Community Network, which works so hard to support the mental health of farmers.