Fighting against antibiotic resistance: EPP Group defines concrete measures

"We are going to reduce the quantity of antibiotics in the food we eat. By banning online sales of antibiotics for veterinary use, we have just made important progress in the fight against antibiotic resistance", declared Françoise Grossetête MEP, Rapporteur of the draft Regulation on veterinary medicinal products, after the Environment Committee adopted the Report today.

"The fight against antibiotic resistance, a real scourge for public health, begins on breeding farms", explained the MEP. "Driven by the EPP Group, we are paving the way for a new Regulation that will allow us to set a framework and restrain the use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine by restricting preventive prescriptions, for example", Grossetête added.

The proposal also encourages better practices on breeding farms and recommends limiting the use of a certain number of antibiotics to human medicine. A list of these antibiotics will be drafted by the European Commission and the European Medicines Agency.

"As well as providing an efficient response to the problem of antibiotic resistance, the text represents a real revolution on the market of veterinary medicinal products. It aims at implementing a totally new Regulation in the placement on the market, the sale and the use of these products in order to improve the options of treatment for breeding animals or pet animals and to stimulate innovation, a field still not dynamic enough in veterinary medicine", concluded Grossetête.