House of Commons – Oct. 10, 2016

That this House expresses concern about recent findings of high levels of antibiotic-resistant e.coli and MRSA on British supermarket meat, of UK origin; welcomes the commitment of the Foods Standards Agency to work with UK food retailers to reduce farm antibiotic use and Waitrose's recently updated policy, which prohibits antibiotic prophylaxis, routine preventative use; notes that the systematic overuse of antibiotics in farm animals is contributing to the emergence of antibiotic resistance in human bacterial infections; considers the routine preventative mass-medication of animals to be unacceptable practice; believes that the adoption of higher welfare farming practices must be central to any successful strategy to reduce farm antibiotic use; and calls on all UK supermarkets to adopt a publicly available policy on antibiotic use within their supply chains, prohibiting routine mass-medication of livestock and committing to drastic reductions in farm use of the critically important antibiotics.