The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has raised serious concerns over plans to build one of the UK’s biggest pig farms in Limavady, Northern Ireland. The plans for a farm producing 60,000 pigs per year have met with opposition from locals and animal welfare and environment campaigners; Causeway Coast and Glens Council, the planning authority, has received over 3,000 letters of objection and petitions totalling over 14,000 signatures condemning the plans, compared to just two letters of support. The Public Health Agency and Northern Ireland’s Environment Agency also expressed concerns to the council earlier this year.

The Alliance believes that there will be significant risks of antibiotic-resistant pathogens spreading from the farm to local residents if the plans are given the go-ahead.

In the latest report on the proposal, an independent company commissioned to produce an environment statement said there would be no adverse impacts on public health or the environment, and even claimed that there would be no need for an anaerobic digester at the site, despite plans for a further increase in the number of pigs, stating instead that slurry could be spread on surrounding fields.

However, the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, which is made up of farming and environment charities, said last week that several strains of livestock-associated MRSA are now present in Northern Irish pig farms, and there is growing evidence from Europe and the United States that MRSA can spread from pig farms via aerosols or when pig slurry is applied to local fields. The Alliance pointed to several studies, which have found that living in proximity to intensive pig farms or to fields where pig slurry is applied is associated with increased risk of being infected by MRSA.

One large survey carried out by the European Food Safety Authority found that the risk of a pig farm being MRSA-positive increased as the size of the pig farm increased. EFSA said their finding was consistent with studies carried out in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy which also found that larger pig farms had significantly higher risk of being MRSA-positive. EFSA said that this might reflect ‘managerial practices typical of larger holdings’, including more buying in of animals with the risk of introducing more pathogens, and a higher likelihood that pathogens will circulate within the herd.
 
Commenting on Friday, Suzi Shingler, campaign manager of the Alliance, said, “Intensively farmed pigs receive by far the highest quantities of antibiotics in UK farming, and we know this leads to lots of different types of resistant bacteria that can transfer to humans. This is often on food, but there is also increasing evidence that it can occur through the environment. The huge size of this pig farm will mean that this health threat to local residents will be magnified.”