Superbug risk from farming medicines: Healthy animals 'shouldn't be given antibiotics'



Minister says preventative use of antibiotics in animals should be banned

Farmers routinely give antibiotics to perfectly healthy livestock

Sees bugs increasingly developing resistance to the drugs

Should humans become infected, normal medicines may not work



Dangerous new superbugs are being created by farmers routinely giving antibiotics to perfectly healthy animals, it has been claimed.



Health minister Anna Soubry has now called on farmers, vets and drug companies to put a stop to the policy to protect human health.



Livestock are often given antibiotics whether or not they are unwell as a preventative measure to stop diseases spreading, but the bugs are increasingly developing resistance to the drugs.

Superbugs: Farmers could potentially be creating a risk to human health by routinely giving antibiotics to healthy animals, it has been claimed

If these superbugs then infect humans through food poisoning, the health consequences can be severe – even fatal – as doctors find the medicines they normally use do not work.



Warning: Health minister Anna Soubry has called on farmers, vets and drug companies to put a stop to the policy

Last year, Cambridge scientists found a superbug version of MRSA in milk that had also been found in pigs, and it is thought the use of antibiotics on farms has been responsible for the emergence of a superbug version of E.coli that has been associated with more than 50 deaths.



Miss Soubry has written to ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), demanding that the preventative – also known as prophylactic – use of antibiotics should be outlawed. She said:



‘The routine prophylactic use of antibiotics is not acceptable practice.’



Last week, Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies warned that the emergence of superbugs was one of the key dangers facing modern medicine. She said: ‘If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics.’



The Department of Health is already putting pressure on GPs to reduce anti-biotic prescriptions for patients, but it also wants tougher controls on their use in farm animals.



Miss Soubry’s stance was backed by the Soil Association, which supports organic farming.

Richard Young, its policy expert, said: ‘We are very grateful to the minister for clarifying the Government’s position and trust that Defra will now move quickly to ensure that the routine use of antibiotics in healthy animals is phased out, in order to slow the spread of antibiotic resistance on farms.’

Current Defra policy authorises the use of antibiotics in healthy animals, although not as a substitute for good farm management and animal husbandry systems.



The Veterinary Medicines Directorate, which issues guidance for the department, said: ‘This authorisation includes the treatment of animals at heightened risk of infection when not all have developed clinical signs of the disease.’

Concerns: Last year Cambridge scientists found a superbug version of MRSA in milk that had also been found in pigs

Drug companies and farmers have formed an organisation, the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance, which insists the use of antibiotics is necessary.

