[ad_1]
Overuse of antibiotics in farm animals is rife in some of the key countries with which the UK hopes to reach a post-Brexit trade deal, a new report shows, raising fears that future deals will jeopardize British Public Health and Agriculture.
The US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada allow farmers to routinely feed antibiotics to livestock to make them grow faster, and in the US and Canada, the use of antibiotics on farms is about five times that level in the UK, data compiled by Alliance to Save Our Antibiotic shows.
Meat produced this way is cheaper, because the animals grow faster and can be kept in crowded conditions. But meat will soon be banned in the EU, for reasons of public health and safety.
Antibiotic use in cattle in the US is about seven times higher than in the UK, and twice as much in pigs, according to the report. In Australia, the use of antibiotics in poultry is more than 16 times higher than in the UK, and the use in pigs is about three times higher.
Agricultural antibiotic use has increased in the US, Canada and New Zealand in recent years, and in Australia it increased in 2010, the last year for which complete data was available. Some of the drugs used are also problematic: the growth promoter bacitracin is used in the US, despite scientific evidence that it increases resistance to a last-resort antibiotic called colistin, which is used to treat infections that they threaten people’s lives.
Cóilín Nunan, scientific advisor to the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, said: “Antibiotic resistance is a global problem and we need to raise standards around the world to prevent it from increasing. These free trade agreements must take that into account. “
The overuse of antibiotics in farm animals leads to resistant forms of bacteria, known as superbugs, which can have devastating consequences for human health. Meat infected with resistant bacteria can directly cause infections in people and can also contribute to a more general increase in people’s resistance to antibiotic treatments.
British farmers are also facing the prospect of being undermined by imports of cheaply produced antibiotic-treated meat, which could lower welfare standards in the UK as farmers will be forced to store their animals in a clean way. denser to cut costs and compete with floods of cheap imports.
“UK producers will be forced to compete by reducing costs, which means more animals in worse conditions, which means an increase in the use of antibiotics,” said Nunan. “Any new trade agreement must not undermine British standards and threaten public health by allowing cheap meat and dairy produced with growth-promoting antibiotics into the UK.”
Medical experts are increasingly concerned about the rapidly increasing resistance to antibiotics around the world, which could leave us defenseless against common illnesses and make routine operations, such as caesarean sections or hip replacements, potentially fatal. Antibiotics are used far more in animals than in people around the world, but powerful agricultural lobby groups in many countries have rejected measures to curb their use.
The use of antibiotics is more strictly controlled in the EU than elsewhere, and the use of drugs as growth promoters has been banned since 2006. In the UK, the use of antibiotics in agriculture has declined sharply in the last half decade, to about half of 2014 levels, although there was a slight rebound last year.
In just over a year, starting in January 2022, stricter EU regulations will ban the import of meat routinely treated with antibiotics as a growth promoter and will ban all massive preventive medication with antibiotics from livestock. The UK is unlikely to adhere to this ban.
The government has repeatedly said that chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef will continue to be banned in the UK after Brexit, following widespread concerns about food standards in future trade deals. However, food and agriculture experts have noted that this still leaves the door open for hundreds of other forms of food and agricultural products that are currently restricted by EU safety regulations, and under current processes, many of these they could be quietly signed for legal acceptance without public scrutiny.
Nunan called the upcoming EU regulations “a big step forward” and called on ministers to adopt them in the UK. “The UK government should commit to implementing the same ban [on preventive mass medication]as relying on voluntary action is not a sustainable approach in the long term. It must also ensure that trade agreements set high standards for imports to protect human health and avoid undermining British standards. “
A government spokesperson said: “This government has made it clear that we will not compromise our world-leading environmental protections, animal welfare and food standards.
“The UK already bans the use of artificial growth hormones in both domestic production and imported products, and this will continue after the transition period. We will also continue to apply strict controls on drugs that can be used for all animals, including food producers, to protect human and animal health and the environment. “
