The UK pig industry is already fully committed to a programme of action to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the National Pig Association said as the Government outlined its stance on the issue.

On Friday (September 16), the Government published its response to Lord Jim O’Neill’s review on AMR.

It confirmed Defra’s commitment to a reduction in antibiotic use in livestock and fish farmed for food to an average across the sectors of 50mg/kg by 2018.

This compares with the most recent figure, from 2014, of 62mg/kg. Defra will work with individual sectors to ensure appropriate sector specific reduction targets are agreed by 2017.

Despite the many uncertainties ahead, British pig producers have a bright future outside the European Union, says the National Pig Association.

In less than two months, antibiotic data for over 1.2m pigs has already been contributed by pig producers to the British pig industry's new on-line medicine book. This represents nearly a third of the national growing and finishing herd and shows outstanding progress in the sector's commitment to record, benchmark and control its use of antibiotics, says Dr Georgina Crayford, who leads the National Pig Association's recently-launched Pig Industry Antibiotic Stewardship Programme.

If government and its regulatory agencies are serious about reducing antibiotics on farms, they should take early action to repair local authority planning processes, which have become progressively more clunky in recent years, says the National Pig Association.

Headline recommendations from the O’Neill report on antimicrobial resistance published today will be incorporated into National Pig Association’s recently launched Pig Industry Antibiotic Stewardship Programme.

National Pig Association has given a guarded welcome to Government’s unexpected volte-face over animal welfare codes.

A promise by ASDA that it will increase its fresh pork to 80 percent British by next year has been welcomed by British pig farmers, who face losses of around £150m in 2016, as a result of low prices caused by Europe’s frozen-pork mountain.

National Pig Association is urging its members to adopt best practice at all times and in every aspect of pig production, in order to counteract an orchestrated wave of propaganda by anti-meat campaigners. It will be advising members to regularly invite non-farming acquaintances to look round the nation’s pig farms in the role of “critical friends”, as a fresh pair of eyes is always helpfu

The National Pig Association has praised Aldi for boosting sales of pork at a time when British pig farmers are suffering their second year of poor returns, caused by a European Union frozen-pork mountain.

English pig producers are stepping up surveillance of high street butchers to ensure when they claim their pork and pork products are British, they really are British, and are not imported from the continent, where different standards apply.