The Alliance to Save our Antibiotics is a coalition of health, medical, farming, environmental and civil society organisations from across the EU. The Alliance was founded by Sustain, Compassion in World Farming and the Soil Association.
The Alliance is calling for a ban to the routine preventative use of antibiotics in groups of healthy animals in the UK and the EU, and for dramatic reductions to farm use of the ‘Critically Important’ antibiotics.
Crucially, we are campaigning for the adoption of farming practices that prioritise animal health and welfare, reducing the need for antibiotics in the first place.
The systematic overuse of antibiotics in human and animal medicine is undermining their ability to cure life-threatening infections. Experts now predict that, globally, 10 million people a year could die from antibiotic resistant infections by 2050.
Despite this, huge amounts of important antibiotics continue to be used in farming, often given to groups of animals routinely and preventatively.
The overuse of antibiotics in farming to compensate for low-welfare, cramped conditions is encouraging the development of resistant bacteria, which can then spread to people. We are calling for urgent action to save our antibiotics for use in unhealthy humans, not healthy animals.