planet on a plate
Antibiotics in UK Agriculture parts 1 to 4 A team of researchers reporting in the
from www.soilassociation.org). It was journal PLoS Medicine in 2007 found
followed by three further reports. evidence that animal agriculture is the main
source of deadly mutations.
In 1997, the World Health Organisation
(WHO) issued a report calling for a restriction Antibiotics and resistant bacteria are found
in the use of antibiotics in farmed animals. In in the air and soil around farms, in surface
1998 the National Research Council & and ground water and in wild animal
Institute of Medicine was even stronger in its populations and on much of the meat
condemnation. In 1999, the UK government’s produced by these places. When Denmark
own Advisory Committee on the banned growth-promoting antibiotics there
Microbiological Safety of Food also issued a was a drop in the prevalence of resistant
massive report and agreed with the WHO. bacteria in all these areas.
But the drugs have kept flowing and the
scale of antibiotic resistance has grown. Methane from animal
Sandy Macara, former chairman of the manure: 18 million
British Medical Association, set out the scale
of the problem: tonnes per year.
“There is a real prospect that the majority of Across the third world, where intensive
our antibiotics could become impotent for animal farming is exploding fastest,
the purposes upon which we have relied antibiotic use is even more unregulated
upon them for 40 years. This would transform than it is in the UK. Residues find their way
society, essentially taking us back to prewar into the environment and through the
days when infectious diseases were prevalent. passing of genetic material from one
It would also place an extremely high risk on bacterium to another, antibiotic-resistant
invasive surgery such as hip replacements.” strains can pass on their resistance to other,
unrelated bacteria.
The superbug methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is already a
high-profile, persistent problem in many UK
hospitals. Now a new strain of MRSA
(identified in 2004) has developed amongst
intensively farmed pigs, chickens and other
livestock in The Netherlands.
The UK government says it is committed to
reducing the amount of antibiotics used in
UK farming yet veterinary use of antibiotics
has increased by 3.5 per cent, from 405
tonnes in 1999 to 419 tonnes in 2005, despite
a fall in overall livestock numbers. In the UK,
over 90 per cent of veterinary antibiotics are
used in pig or poultry production.
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