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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a ban on the preventative use of antibiotics on healthy farm animals to help (a) stop antimicrobial resistance and (b) safeguard the effectiveness of lifesaving antibiotics used to treat human illnesses.

The Government is committed to reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics in animals while safeguarding their welfare. Changes to the law on veterinary medicines represent one tool that can be used to help effect reductions in antibiotic prescribing in animals. The Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 are currently under review, and the feedback from the recently closed public consultation will be analysed and considered.

The publicly available consultation documents for the revision of the Veterinary Medicines Legislation set out the rationale for the Government’s proposed approach to the use of antibiotics to prevent disease in animals (prophylaxis). In summary, the proposed new legal restrictions on antibiotic prophylaxis prohibit this type of use in all but exceptional circumstances in order to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use, protect animal welfare and allow changes to prescribing practices to be made sustainably.

To date in the UK, collaborative working between the Government, the veterinary profession and the agriculture sectors to focus on these issues has already resulted in our national sales of veterinary antibiotics reducing by 55% since 2014, and in 2021 we recorded the lowest antibiotic use yet.

The Government takes a ‘One-Health’ approach to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as set out in the UK National Action Plan on AMR. Officials from the Department of Health and Social Care, Defra and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate meet regularly to consider appropriate actions to address AMR across the human and animal health sectors. This has included discussion on the preventative use of antibiotics in healthy farm animals.