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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits for tackling superbugs of (a) prohibiting all forms of routine farm antibiotic use and (b) prohibiting purely preventative antibiotic group treatments.

Defra does not support the routine or predictable use of antibiotics, including where antibiotics are used to compensate for inadequate farming practices.We have been consistent that the focus of tackling antimicrobial resistance must be on reducing all unnecessary use of antibiotics, because resistance is promoted whenever an antibiotic is used, regardless of the reason.