Western Daily Press (Saturday)
It’s safer to eat local when it comes to food production
West dairy farmer Ro Collingbourn hails the UK’s efforts to reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics in livestock
THIS pandemic has had a large death toll, and left no one unscathed, be it lockdown, closed business, lost holidays or mental stress, but everyone is hoping it will either die down or come to an end, in the face of the many vaccines that are now coming onto the market.
However, in this shrinking world, it’s important to conquer Covid-19 on a worldwide basis, and this means vaccinating the world. As we are now part of a global economy, are we in danger of taking it for granted that all medicines will continue to be effective?
Alexander Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin in 1929 completely changed the face of medicine. Antibiotics were transformative, and doctors were happy to prescribe them freely, as they knew they would work. Over the years, antibiotics became overused, leading to resistance (where bacteria develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them and the germs continue to grow). Now UK doctors prescribe antibiotics more cautiously to preserve their efficiency when they are really needed.
But imagine a world where few antibiotics work, and any small cut could lead to sepsis and death. Older people will no longer be able to have joint replacements, meaning a painful, deliberating old age. Any invasive operation will be become risky. Childbirth becomes more dangerous, even fatal. Pre-antibiotics this was the case; antibiotics really have been the wonder drug in the development of modern medicine.
Although most of the latest problems from antibiotic resistance have come from human medicine, antibiotics are also used to treat animals and historically there has been overuse, particularly where large groups of animals were housed together, and antibiotics added routinely to feed to prevent disease. Since 2014, there has been a massive drive in the UK to reduce antibiotic use in livestock, and sales to treat farm animals have halved since 2014 – our use in commercial farm animals is now the lowest in Europe and probably the
We don’t want our farms and jobs to be put at risk from unfair competition from cheap, poor quality, and lower standard imports, neither do we want our nation’s health put at risk
world. Sales of critically important antibiotics have fallen 75% since 2014 and sales of Colistin, critically important for human health, are virtually nil. From 2021, new targets have been set to reduce antibiotic use even more. The emphasis is to produce animals with strong immune systems, so that antibiotics are only needed when individuals become seriously ill.
However, this is not always the case elsewhere. As we leave Europe, the pressure is on for trade deals with countries like US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and South America, countries who keep huge numbers of animals in feed lots, routinely given antibiotics in feed. Cattle are subject to hormone implants to make them grow faster, a practice banned in the EU since 2006. Even worse, the antibiotic added to these implants to prevent infection is a high priority critically important antibiotic in human medicine.
These are countries that are keen to export their agricultural surpluses into the UK, using new post-Brexit trade deals. Much has been made of the possible import of lower welfare and hygiene standards, water shortages and habitat destruction into our food chain from these deals, but what of antibiotic use? The use of antibiotics in food production in the US is seven times greater than the UK; in the Australian poultry industry it is 15 times higher. The overuse of antibiotics can lead to resistance, and there is the potential to transfer the bacteria that have acquired resistance to the UK population, through the import of unsafe food.
The British farming industry has worked hard, largely on a voluntary basis, to reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics, and standards are being raised all the time, and it has much to be proud of in this respect.
We don’t want our farms and jobs to be put at risk from unfair competition from cheap, poor quality, and lower standard imports, neither do we want our nation’s health put at risk.
When it comes to food production, it’s safer to buy local.
Ro Collingbourn is a Wiltshire dairy farmer and has been dairy chairman of the Women’s Food and Farming Union, on the Milk Development Council, the Veterinary Products Committee, the RSPCA Council and is currently a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Director.