UK reports continued drop in livestock antibiotic use with major progress on resistance

The UK has maintained its position as one of the lowest users of antibiotics across Europe and has also succeeded in achieving some of the largest reductions in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) across Europe in the last decade.

According to the Veterinary Antimicrobial Resistance and Sales Surveillance (VARSS) data for 2024, sales of veterinary antibiotics for use in food-producing animals, adjusted for animal population, were 15.6mg/kg, representing a 2% fall (0.3mg/kg) on 2023 figures and a 57% decrease (20.5mg/kg) since 2014.

Sales of Highest Priority Critically Important Antimicrobials (HP-CIAs) for food-producing animals remained very low at 0.06mg/kg and were essentially unchanged on 2023 figures but are 84% lower (0.32mg/kg) than 2014. For the fourth year in succession, no colistin was sold in the UK for use in animals.

Antibiotic use in broilers, hens and turkeys

Figures for broilers showed a further fall in 2024 to 4.7mg/kg (down 0.92mg/kg) on 2023 figures and 77% lower than the 20.3mg/kg when the survey began in 2014.

Laying hens antibiotic use, recorded in percentage of bird days, was fractionally higher (up 0.06 bird days) to 0.28 bird days, but 58% lower than in 2014. Turkeys saw a 3.2mg/kg rise to 19.7mg/kg, but were 82% lower than the 108.1mg/kg recorded when the survey began in 2014.

HP-CIAs given to broilers fell 0.001mg/kg to 0.0009mg/kg – a 99.8% reduction since 2014 when 0.51mg/kg were administered, while levels given to laying hens rose fractionally to 0.0007mg/kg in 2024 – a 98% fall since 2014.

The harmonised monitoring outcome indicators combine results from healthy poultry at slaughter to give an overall picture of AMR and are comparable internationally.

E.coli under the microscope

Results show a decrease in fully susceptible E.coli from 43% in 2022/23 to 36% in 2023/24. This is the first substantial decrease since harmonised monitoring began in 2014 and is attributable to increased resistance in broilers. The percentage of multi-drug-resistant isolates (resistant to 3 or more antibiotic classes) continues to decrease and remains at the lowest recorded level of 27%.

What about Salmonella and Campylobacter jejuni?

In 2024, fully susceptible Salmonella isolated from broilers and laying hens decrease but rose in turkeys while resistance to ciprofloxacin in Campylobacter jejuni from broilers and turkeys has increased since 2022 despite minimal use by the sectors.

Ongoing progress

Abi Seager, VMD CEO, said she was pleased with the progress achieved across many sectors and looked forward to the forthcoming third set of targets being launched by RUMA (Responsible Use of Medicianes) Agriculture: “We look forward to the ongoing collaboration between industry and government to improve animal health and antibiotic stewardship.”

The RUMA also released its last Targets Task Force report for cycle 2, which charted a positive year of antibiotic stewardship across UK livestock sectors.

Reduction levels stabilising for many sectors

RUMA Agriculture chair Cat McLaughlin said: “The continued effort and commitment across UK livestock sectors remains clear to see in both VARSS and RUMA Agriculture Targets Task Force reports. While reductions in use have been significant over the past decade, as expected, we are starting to see reduction levels stabilising for many sectors as practices encouraging good stewardship have become ever more mainstream.

“It is also vital that sectors have the ability to use antibiotics when it is appropriate to do so – right time, right place, right situation, in response to disease outbreaks; this is reflected in the latest usage trends across the sectors, with some recording upticks in use in response to disease outbreaks and others recording their lowest use to date.”

‘Ionophores – the most widely used and least regulated farm antibiotics’

However, the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics, which was launched to cut the use of antibiotics in farm animals through better livestock husbandry, said in its report into antibiotic drug use, particularly in pigs and poultry, that the use of ionophores was too high.

It said poultry producers are still using too many ionophores, a kind of medicine to treat parasites, and it wants ionophores to be classified as antibiotics.

In a new report, ‘Ionophores – the most widely used and least regulated farm antibiotics’, the Alliance said total sales of ionophores rose by 21% in 2023 compared with 2022.

In 2023, 270 tonnes of ionophores were sold for use in poultry, which is 17 times higher than the use of all medically important antibiotics in poultry (15 tonnes) and more than the total sales of all other antibiotics in all animal species (189 tonnes).

The Alliance said that despite their widespread use, ionophores are excluded from the veterinary antibiotic sales data, because the drugs are animal-only antibiotics, as they are too toxic to be used in human medicine. They are therefore less regulated than other antibiotics used in farming.

Ionophores are routinely added to chicken feed, without the need for a veterinary prescription, to prevent coccidiosis, which occurs when birds ingest droppings.

“Regulators must take action”

The Alliance argued recent studies provide strong evidence that the use of ionophores in poultry increases resistance to antibiotics used in human medicine in enterococci bacteria in poultry, which can transmit to humans.

Colin Nunan, policy officer for the Alliance , said several studies had found consistent evidence that widespread ionophore used in poultry was selecting for resistance to medically important antibiotics: “UK regulators need to take action to end the routine use of ionophores in UK poultry. This will help prevent resistant bacteria spreading to humans through food.

“Ending routine preventative ionophore use would mean that hygiene standards on chicken farms would need to be improved, so that chickens were no longer ingesting chicken droppings. This would mean keeping fewer birds per square metre. The cost implications would not be huge. One industry analysis estimates it would cost just 6p-9p extra per bird, whereas another estimated it would be about 11p,” he added.

The British Poultry Council, however, said ionophores were not antibiotics but antiparasitics and had no impact on human health.