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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the contribution of animal farming in the UK to the growing resistance to antibiotics; and whether they have set targets for the reduction of antibiotics use in animal farming.

Bacteria naturally adapt and find new ways to survive the effects of an antibiotic; any use of an antibiotic accelerates the risk that bacteria will develop resistance. In its response last year to the Independent Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, the Government set a target to reduce antibiotic use by 20% across all food-producing species from 2014 baseline data to 50mg/kg by 2018. Latest data show that antibiotic use in 2016 was 45 mg/kg. Defra also undertook to work with the livestock industry to set sector-specific targets for reducing antibiotic use by the end of this year. These targets have now been published which can be found here: http://www.ruma.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/RUMA-Targets-Task-Force-Report-2017-FINAL.pdf