Dear Editor,
So the EU is sounding alarm bells because of increasing antibiotic resistance ("EU alarm over antibiotic resistance", GW, 25th November 2016). This is only right and proper (and should have been done years ago) but I feel that there is a certain "credibility gap" here, a feeling reinforced by the platitudes spoken by European Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis: "one-health approach"? What one health is that?
Your report fails to mention one major contributer to the resistance-problem which is the routine "feeding" of anitbiotics to intensively-reared livestock. This is something which common-sense tells us should simply NOT be allowed.
The irony here is that it is the EU in Brussels (cajoled by corporate lobbyists) which has been pushing for ever-more "competitive" (i.e. industrial-scale) agriculture which, by its very nature, requires the abuse of medicines and a whole host of other cruel, damaging and polluting practices.
Irony upon irony: the EU recently declared that it will be taking Germany to court because excessive levels of nitrate found in ground-water. The nitrate is caused by run-off from slurry which is the excrement produced by many millions of shed-housed cattle, cattle which exist because of a.) the nature of our out-of-control "free-market" and b.) the structures of EU-regulation and subsidies (which favour industrial-scale operations).
So please, let's get real: EU policy has (massively) contributed to these problems so how can they so pompously presume to preside over the solution?
Regards
