Leaders reject consumer attack on intensive area
Leaders reject consumer attack on intensive area
By Jonathan Riley
A NATIONAL Consumer Council report calling for a ban on antibiotic growth promoters has been branded a confused attempt to inflame public anxiety by industry leaders.
The NCC report – Farm Policies and Our Food: The Need For Change – blamed the CAP for encouraging intensive farming methods which, it said, had led to the BSE crisis.
It also called pesticide and fertiliser use a serious threat to public health and highlighted antibiotic growth promoters, which it linked to antibiotic resistance in humans, as the most serious threat to public health.
The report recommended an action plan for the government which included:
• Joining Sweden in banning growth promoters.
• Phasing out compensation payments.
• Making farmers liable for the safety of produce.
But Roger Cook, director of the animal health firms representative group, NOAH, said that the NCC should check its facts before criticising British farming and accused the group of attempting to inflame public anxiety.
He said the report was confused over the facts behind farmings role in foodborne disease, antibiotic resistance, and growth promoters. A rise in foodborne disease was linked with modern living and poor handling of food. And evidence suggested incorrect antibiotic use in human medicine was more to blame for resistance, Mr Cook said.
He also attacked the reports proposed ban on growth promoters in line with Swedens policy. He said Sweden had merely redesignated leading growth promoters as therapeutic medicines and that the country now used more medicated feed in rations rather than less.
Mr Cook argued that if subsidies were withdrawn then producers would have to use more modern techniques, and intensify further, to compete on the world market.
An NFU official called the report alarmist and outdated because many of the points raised were already being addressed. She said there was no evidence of resistance transfer between animals and man and the report could offer no evidence to challenge this fact.
An NCC spokesperson said the report was a new venture for the council. "We dont usually get involved with agriculture."
Meat and Livestock Commission director general Colin Maclean said the report had ignored the strict regulations already in place in the UK to protect the consumer. And antibiotic therapy and growth promoters were beneficial to animal health and welfare.