The French Ministry of Agriculture has announced plans to cut antibiotics use in hopes of reducing the risk posed by antibiotic resistance. This week the European Commission unveiled a 12 point plan to tackle antibiotic resistance, in which it said farmers have a large part to play in tackling the problem.

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The French government announced yesterday that it plans to reduce the use of antibiotic in animal medicine by 25 per cent over the next five years and will has pledged to focus on developing alternative medicines.  Jean-Luc Angot, a ministry of agriculture official, made the announcement Thursday, unveiling a plan for reducing antimicrobials use.

On unveiling the national strategy, M Angot said, "Antibiotics are essential to animal health. It is for this reason that we must begin to think differently about how and why we are using them."

In the EU, the use of antibiotics as growth promoters has been outlawed since 2006. However, there have been increasing calls to ban the prophylactic use of antibiotics; speaking yesterday, Joyce D'Silva, Director of Public Affairs at Compassion in World Farming, warned the prophylactic use of antibiotics is a "cheap insurance policy, the excessive use of which makes a world without effective antibiotics for humans ever more likely. "

In France, the Ministry of Agriculture began monitoring the sale of antibiotics in 1999; ministry figures show that antibiotic use fell 12.1 per cent between 2007 and 2010. The government plan aims to reduce the use of antibiotics when treating animals and to preserve long-term therapeutic effectiveness of antibiotics in veterinary and human medicine.

As well as compiling a list of 21 measures to take, the Ministry of Agriculture announced its  priorities in combating the overuse of antibiotics use are:

- To promote good practice and raise awareness of the risk of antibiotic resistance, and preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics.

- Develop alternatives to avoid the use of antibiotics.

- Strengthen management practices to reduce risks.

- Strengthen the monitoring of antibiotic consumption and antibiotic resistance.

- Promote European research and international initiatives.