Campaigners have called for immediate action on antibiotic resistance after new data published on Friday (14 October) by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) revealed that many European countries are failing to act on a “massive overuse” of antibiotics in farming.

Though farm and veterinary groups have often emphasised the unsustainable use of antibiotics in human medicine and claimed there are no concrete links between high levels of drug use in some farm systems and the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, antibiotic use in Europe remains more than twice as high in animals as in humans and scientists who discovered resistance to last-resort polymyxin antibiotics in E.Coli bacteria late last year put the development down to use of the drugs on pig farms in China.
 
The O’Neill Review on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), commissioned by the UK government and published in May this year, recommended that high-income countries should aim for a short-term target of 50 mg of antibiotic per kg of livestock. However, EMA figures show that the average European level of use is over three times higher at 152 mg/kg. In the 25 European countries which provided comparable data, sales of farm antibiotics per unit of livestock went down by just 2% in 2014 compared with 2013.

Campaigners noted that if small annual reductions of just 2% are maintained, it will take 65 years for Europe to reach the O’Neill target. The O'Neill AMR review warned that unless immediate action is taken on antibiotic resistance (including preventing use of certain classes of antibiotic in agriculture and reducing use of existing treatments), the annual death toll from infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria could rise from 700,000 today to 10 million by mid-century (or one person every three seconds).  
 
Elsewhere, the EMA report shows use of the antibiotics classified as “critically important in human medicine” by the World Health Organization increased to record levels in 2014. Use of the antibiotic colistin, which is used in human medicine as a last-resort for treating life-threatening infections, also increased in 2014.
 
Cóilín Nunan, spokesperson for the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, commented, “The shocking overuse of farm antibiotics shown by these data is a result of the continued failure by most countries to ban routine preventative mass medication in intensive farming. Spain now uses 100 times more antibiotics per unit of livestock than Norway, 80 times more than Iceland and 35 times more than Sweden. The main reason for the difference is that Spain, like most of Europe, allows routine mass medication, whereas the Nordic countries do not. The increased use of last-resort and critically important antibiotics is particularly alarming and confirms that reliance on voluntary and softly-softly approaches is not working.”
 
The EMA data shows that over 91% of European farm antibiotics are used for mass medication in feed or drinking water. A large proportion of this is for routine disease prevention in intensively farmed pigs and poultry. In contrast, in Sweden, where there is no routine medication, 90% of farm antibiotic use is for individual treatments.

Antibiotic use in the British livestock in 2014 was at similar levels to 2013 (Significantly below the EU average, at 62 mg/kg). However, according to the Alliance, UK consumption appears quite low due to its high proportion of sheep (which don’t consume a lot of antibiotics) and relatively few pigs (which have higher consumption rates).
 
In January 2017, discussions are due to commence between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on future veterinary medicines legislation. The European Parliament has proposed a ban on all routine antibiotic use, but this has not yet been accepted by the Council of Ministers or the Commission.
 
Commenting on the ongoing negotiations, Cóilín Nunan said, “The British government must support the European Parliament’s proposed ban on routine mass medication in the upcoming “Trialogue” negotiations. When Brexit happens, the Prime Minister says that EU rules and regulations will be converted into British law with the Great Repeal Bill, so these negotiations are going to be hugely important for the future of British farming.”