Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the potential risk to human health of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria polluting rivers from factory farms.

Antimicrobial usage (AMU) is a key driver influencing the occurrence and emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The degree of intensification of farm production systems can have a bearing on AMU, but that is not necessarily the case. Intensive production systems can involve high health status livestock with high biosecurity to prevent entry of disease and consequently can have low AMU. We are researching the pathways for AMR transmission in the environment to inform future monitoring. A cross-departmental project called Pathogen Surveillance in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (PATH-SAFE) was established in 2021. It brings together the Food Standards Agency, Food Standards Scotland, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Environment Agency, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) to understand how pathogens and 'Superbugs' - or Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) - is spread. PATH-SAFE contains a workstream focused on AMR prevalence in three river catchments and this work will strengthen our understanding of AMR in the environment, including the relative importance of different sources, transmission routes and, the implications for people, animals, food and ecosystems. This will enable us to increase public awareness and inform effective control measures to protect human and animal health and the ecosystem, through a better understanding of the transmission pathway by which resistance develops and  spreads.