The European Commission last week unveiled controversial proposals on veterinary medicinal products and medicated feed. The Commission claimed its proposals, which will now go before the Council and Parliament, will improve animal health and welfare whilst tackling the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance and "fostering innovation".

The EU executive said new legislation on medicated feed will include domestic pets in its scope, applying the same standards across the board, and will crack down on the sale of veterinary medicines over the internet. New rules will also "introduce the possibility of restricting" authorisation for veterinary use of certain treatments that are vital for fighting infections in humans.

However, campaign groups have expressed concern as, against a backdrop of calls from experts in the fields of human and animal medicine to rein in the use of medication – except for when it is absolutely vital – the Commission proposals "aim in particular to make more medicines available in the EU to treat and prevent disease".

The Commission acknowledged that its "proposed rules will benefit animals [and] the pharmaceutical and feed industries in the EU."

Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for Health, said on Wednesday, "These proposals both have animal health and welfare at their heart. However, they also represent a major step forward for public health as they introduce measures that contribute towards combatting the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), keeping antibiotics effective for people and animals alike."

Groups including the European Veterinary Federation FVE have broadly welcomed the plans, but on Monday the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics claimed that the Commission's proposals ignore scientists' warnings over the veterinary use of antibiotics.

Alison Craig, Campaign Manager for the Alliance, commented on Monday, "The European Commission and the British government have both stated they don't support the routine preventative use of antibiotics on farms, but both still back legislation which makes it legal.

"Antibiotic growth promoters are nominally banned in the EU. But the truth is that many of the same antibiotics can still be given to the same animals when no disease has been diagnosed. This is why, as the House of Commons Science and Technology recently said in their report on antibiotic resistance, the total veterinary use of tetracycline antibiotics has increased nearly tenfold and that of penicillin-type antibiotics has increased nearly fivefold since they were banned as growth promoters."

"Governments and MEPs who are serious about avoiding the 'apocalyptic scenario' that the Chief Medical Officer has been describing, whereby people in the future may die from routine infections because of antibiotic resistance, must ensure that a ban on all routine use of antibiotics in farming is added to the Commission’s proposals."

In May, expert scientists published a paper in the journal Nature, warning that the threat posed by the growing number of disease-causing bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics is equal to that posed by climate change. Since then, the UK's Chief Medical Office Professor Dame Sally Davies has issued the same warning.  

In its proposals, the Commission warns that "The use of antimicrobials in veterinary medicinal products may accelerate the emergence and spread of resistant micro-organisms and may compromise the effective use of the already limited number of existing antimicrobials to treat human infections. Therefore the misuse of antimicrobials should not be allowed."

Work from the Commission's health watchdog EFSA showed in March that levels of resistance to vital antimicrobials and evidence of multidrug resistance in bacteria tested in the EU amounted to a "cause for concern."

A Lancet Infectious Diseases Commission paper published last year reported that "routine prevention with antimicrobials also used for treatment should be phased out".

Despite these warnings and recommendations, the Alliance said on Monday that the Commission has opted to allow veterinarians to continue prescribing routine preventative doses of antibiotics, even when no disease has been diagnosed. Although the prophylactic use of medicated food would be outlawed under the proposals, routine preventative use of antibiotics in animals' drinking water would remain legal.

The Alliance also criticised the British government's five-year strategy for dealing with antibiotic resistance, as the plan contains no commitment to reducing farm antibiotic use, but has targets for reducing use in humans.