Assurance scheme Red Tractor will require pig producers in the scheme to submit data on their antibiotics use to a national system.

From November, producers registered with the scheme will need to have uploaded data from the previous two quarters to the electronic medicine book (eMB-Pigs), a platform set up by AHDB which records antibiotics usage. Announcing the new rules on Monday, Red Tractor said registered farmers should start preparing immediately. They will have to upload their antibiotic use for quarter two (1st April to 30th June) and quarter three (1st July to 30th September) by 1st November to comply with the changes to the scheme, and will be required to upload information on antibiotics use every three months after the November start date.

Currently, only around 40% of the pig sector has submitted data to the eBM platform, and the number of producers supplying data has reportedly doubled since Christmas.

The assurance mark, which has been criticised in the past for offering only minimum standards of welfare and sustainability, announced last October that it would be strengthening its standards to protect the brand and reflect shoppers’ desires. Collecting information on antibiotics use could be used to set reduction targets, to preserve antibiotics from the growing threat of resistance.

Pig industry group the National Pig Association has welcomed Red Tractor’s move, saying efforts to collect and collate data on on-farm antibiotics use fits in to the Association’s own stewardship designs.

Speaking to Farming Online on Monday, Cóilín Nunan, Scientific Adviser to campaign group the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, said, “We very much welcome this new requirement for pig producers to supply information on antibiotic use, and hope that it will soon be a requirement for all farm-animal species. However, even more importantly than data collection, we need new Red Tractor rules which put an end to preventative group treatments with antibiotics. The British Poultry Council has already made this move, and the pig industry urgently needs to follow.”

The Alliance clashed with the NPA in January, after campaigners unfavourably compared action to reduce antibiotics use in the poultry industry with the pig industry’s response to growing calls to reduce antibiotics use.