Another year, another self-congratulatory headline from the UK poultry industry touting its “continued leadership in responsible antibiotic use”.
While the British Poultry Council’s antibiotic report proudlys point to an 83% reduction in total antibiotic use and a 99% reduction in critically important antibiotics since 2012, the truth is conveniently left out: these massive cuts were only possible because the industry spent so many years abusing antibiotics as a cheap substitute for decent animal welfare.
As England’s former chief medical officer Sally Davies bluntly stated, antibiotics were simply being “thrown at cows and chickens and sheep”. It’s no great feat to reduce usage by 83% when you were flagrantly overmedicating animals to begin with.
Antibiotic resistance
Let’s consider the critically important antibiotics. One group that is cited specifically by the industry are fluoroquinolones. This is a group of last-resort antibiotics used to treat multiple infections in humans, including salmonella and campylobacter infections, the two most common infections people receive from eating chicken.
The World Health Organization classified these antibiotics as critically important for human medicine all the way back in 2005, yet it was not until 2012 that the poultry industry decided to actively address their usage. By then, it was utterly too late.
Even in 2018/19, government data showed a shocking 51% of campylobacter isolated from retail chickens was resistant to fluoroquinolones. This doesn’t require scientific jargon: it means the industry knowingly prolonged the reckless misuse of critically important antibiotics, contributing to resistance in over half of their product. Their eventual public announcements were not acts of leadership, but a belated, self-serving response to a crisis they actively exacerbated.
The only thing worse than the self-congratulating is the industry claiming leadership in responsible antibiotic use while failing to address the biggest cause of antibiotic usage: fast-growing breeds of chicken. Studies have consistently shown that conventional farming systems that include these breeds use significantly more antibiotics overall than systems with slower-growing breeds.
All we have to do is compare UK usage to the Netherlands, which has taken animal welfare seriously and reformed its poultry industry to phase out fast-growing breeds.
The latest figure cited by the British Poultry Council in 2024 for overall antibiotic usage in broilers is 11.33mg/pcu (the industry metric for measuring antibiotic per kg of animal). This is almost twice as high as the Netherlands was back in 2022 (5.8mg/pcu). It has never been clearer: while the UK industry is making minimal progress in antibiotic reduction, there will be very little meaningful progress until it transitions away from these fast-growing breeds.
Poultry public relations
With the recent commitments from all of the large retailers to lower broiler stocking densities, changing chicken breeds is the last remaining step towards meeting the Better Chicken Commitment, a scientifically backed set of criteria for improving the most significant suffering in broiler production. As well as welfare improvements, it will also result in a significant reduction in antibiotic usage, marking a win-win for chickens and human health alike.
But supermarkets, with the exception of Waitrose and M&S, have remained stubborn on the issue of breed, and they command so much leverage over farmers of all kinds.
The Co-op has refused to quit using overbred birds, even though its membership has twice voted for it to do so. Lidl and Morrisons have also refused campaigners, and Sainsbury’s even committed to improve chicken welfare back in 2010, only to ditch the promise when it became too inconvenient eight years later.
With an estimated 65% of UK chicken sold in supermarkets, these major retailers are the main block to securing a better future for billions of sentient animals, as well as better health for us and our children.
If the poultry industry wants to earn back some credibility and earnestly address antibiotic usage, it needs to stop celebrating small cuts and accept some responsibility by presenting a firm and transparent plan to fully transition to the BCC.
Never forget the true cost behind the UK poultry industry’s antibiotic reduction boasts. Their “success” is merely a minimal, self-serving public relations manoeuvre designed to bury the story of a crisis they intentionally prolonged. Worse still, the supermarkets continue to guarantee future problems by refusing to phase out fast-growing broiler breeds, one of the core drivers of disease and antibiotic dependency.
Addressing this issue should be led by those with the broadest shoulders: the supermarkets. This is not only essential for the welfare of around one billion chickens produced in the UK annually, but for the remaining efficacy of the antibiotics we have left.
Liam Hodgson is senior global technical manager for broilers at The Humane League
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