The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has reviewed statistics released by the Danish Food and Agriculture Minister, Dan Jørgensen, comparing antibiotic use in Danish organic and conventional pigs. in response to a parliamentary question last year.
 
The statistics, based on data collected through the national Danish database VetStat which covers all farm antibiotic use, showed that conventional pigs were treated with about ten times more doses per 100 animal days than organic pigs, and for weaner pigs the difference increased to 20 times.
 
In a meeting last week in the UK House of Commons, which the Alliance organised, and which was hosted by members of Parliament from four political parties, Dr Richard Beale of Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust described some of the human-health consequences of increasing antibiotic resistance in patients suffering from sepsis. He said that every hour of delay in giving patients with sepsis appropriate antibiotic therapy resulted in a 6-7% increase in mortality, but because of widespread resistance sometimes the only antibiotic that worked was a decades-old drug, Colistin, which had previously been discarded because of its toxic effects.

As sepsis is currently the biggest health burden in the developed world, and risk of infection remains very high, Beale maintained that antibiotics are essential and we must protect them.
 
The leading bacterial cause of infections leading to sepsis in the UK is E. coli, and many scientists now believe that the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is a major contributor to resistance in E. coli.
 
In the UK, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate does not yet publish accurate antibiotic use data by species as it does not yet have a comparable system to VetStat, but the sales data the VMD does publish shows that antibiotic use in British pigs and poultry is about 4 or 5 times higher per unit of livestock than it is in Denmark.
 
This data suggests that the UK pig and poultry industry could cut their use of antibiotics by four or five times, as Denmark has done. The Alliance to Save our Antibiotics this week called on the next Government to set a clear and challenging target for antibiotic use in British livestock farming.  

Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, which is one of the groups that makes up the alliance, said, “The figures from Denmark also show that if UK organic pigs receive similar amounts of antibiotics as Danish organic pigs, then the difference between UK organic and non-organic pigs would be about 40 or 50 fold.”