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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the oral evidence of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Farming, Food and Marine Environment to the Science and Technology Committee of 12 March 2014, HC 848, question 327, what the evidential basis is for his statement that antibiotics tend to be used in the veterinary world more sparingly than in the medical world.

Data on antibiotic use in the medical and veterinary sectors are currently collated in a different format, which prevents direct comparison.

However, data from the Health and Social Care Information Centre shows that 376 tonnes of just one class of antibiotic, the β-lactams, was used in primary care in England in 2012. This does not factor in other classes of antibiotic, or those used in secondary care. In contrast the total sales of all antibiotics for use in animals for the whole UK was 409 tonnes, 82 tonnes of which were β-lactams.