Animal Diseases: Future Pandemics

Lord Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend puts it extremely well. It is exactly that kind of intervention at the front line that can nip infections in the bud, but it is only through international collaboration that we can really tackle the threat of zoonotic infection. The concept of zoonotic tech is not one that I had previously come across, but I will take it away from this debate and have a good look at what more we could do to support it.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, one of the key “one health” projects initiated by government has been the target of reducing the prophylactic use of antibiotics in farm animals to help reduce the incidence of antibiotic resistance, thereby helping to treat zoonotic diseases in humans. The Government set targets in 2017 on the use of antibiotics in animals over the next three years. What progress has there been? What other plans are going forward, as the 2017 project has now ended?

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

The noble Lord identifies the threat extremely well indeed. The Department of Health works extremely closely with Defra on this exact point. I pay tribute to both the farming community here in the UK and officials at Defra for their work to encourage farmers to stand back from prophylactic use of antibiotics.