I beg to move,
That this House has considered the use of antibiotics on healthy farm animals and antimicrobial resistance.
It is a great honour and pleasure to be here this afternoon and to see you in the Chair, Mr Bone.
Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR as it is more commonly known, should be of grave concern to us all because it affects every single one of our constituents up and down the country. As we emerge from the shadow of the covid-19 pandemic, this looming health catastrophe must be treated with greater urgency. We are on the edge of yet another global human health crisis, described by the United Nations Environment Programme as a “silent pandemic”, except we will be able to vaccine our way out of this one. Worldwide, more than a million people a year are already dying from infections that cannot be treated with antibiotics. Our food system is broken, and this is the hidden public health cost of intensive factory farming.