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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will hold discussions with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on the potential merits of a ban on the overuse of antibiotics on healthy farm animals to help prevent antimicrobial resistance.

The UK Government is committed to reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics in animals while safeguarding animal welfare. Antibiotics are an essential part of veterinary medicine. Failing to use antibiotics in animals which need them compromises animal health and welfare. It has been our position for many years that we do not support the routine or predictable use of antibiotics, including where antibiotics are used to compensate for inadequate farming practices.

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate annually record the sales and usage of antibiotics in food producing animals, and have surveillance programmes in place which test for antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from animals. In the UK, the use of antibiotics in food producing animals has reduced by 55% between 2014 and 2021, and in 2021 we recorded the lowest antibiotic use to date.

As the Minister responsible for biosecurity, London Benyon regularly raises the risks of antimicrobial resistance in the relevant cross-Whitehall settings, including with counterparts at the Department of Health and Social Care.