title: Antibiotic policies in the UK dairy industry: A voluntary industry-led approach in action
Creators: name: Begemann, Stephanie
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2019

description: Today a major topic of concern is the use of antibiotics in food animals and its link with the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in humans. Public health agencies across the globe frame the ‘misuse and overuse’ of antibiotics in agriculture as major human driver to the development of AMR in animals, humans and the environment. In 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) has made its livestock sectors and food supply chains responsible to reduce and achieve responsible antibiotic use. Since, antibiotic surveillance systems are being implemented across livestock sectors to measure and monitor antibiotic practices. This is complemented with educational interventions and guidelines to ‘rationalise’ antibiotic use by farmers and veterinarians. According to the latest UK veterinary antibiotic surveillance and sales report, the sales of veterinary antibiotics for use in food-producing animals have dropped with 40% between 2013 in 2017. It is believed by governmental and agricultural policymakers that the antibiotic policies undertaken by the livestock sectors is taking force. This PhD thesis has reconsidered the progress claimed by the UK veterinary antibiotic surveillance and sales reports. Moving beyond statistical realities, it examined how the UK’s industry-led approach is taking shape in practice. A multi-sited ethnographic methodological framework has been used to examine at first how the UK has consolidated around an industry-led approach, in contrast to some other European countries who used legislation to tackle persistent antibiotic practices. Second, taking the UK dairy industry as case study, interview and observational methods were used to understand how dairy policies are formulated by the dairy sector and dairy supply chains and how the policies are practised by farmers and veterinarians. Findings reveal that the policies in the dairy industry only partially address the complex network of people, animals and the environment in which dairy antibiotics circulate. Although milk processors and retailers in the UK have taken up the lead to produce dairy antibiotic policies, the policies seem to benefit market purposes rather than addressing structural issues in UK dairy production systems. Some of the antibiotic policies produce new travel routes of antibiotics between systems resulting in new public health risks. Other antibiotic policies fail to assess how veterinarians and farmers are constrained in their antibiotic choices by their agricultural actor-networks. As a result, the UK’s industry-led approach maintains and reproduces irresponsible antibiotic practices in the UK dairy industry. This study reveals how antibiotic ‘misuse and overuse’ in agriculture is far from a behavioural matter, with solely farmers and veterinarians to blame. Instead, antibiotic use in food animals is embedded in complex economic networks that constrain radical changes in dairy husbandry management and antibiotic use on farms. To achieve responsible farming and improve antibiotic practices, the UK government should take responsibility and work more closely with the UK livestock sectors to understand what regulatory and financial support is needed.