NOAH Deplores Organic Opportunism

NOAH has welcomed the results of veterinary medicine residue testing published in the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) 1997 Annual Report on Surveillance.

99.5% of food samples analysed were clear, this is a further improvement on the 1996 level of 99.2%.

The residue monitoring programme is a requirement of EU law, UK is, however, one of the few Member States that regularly publishes the results of their survey, which goes far beyond the basic EU requirement.

"This result is further evidence of the success of UK controls and the care with which veterinary surgeons and farmers use animal medicines such as antibiotics", said Roger Cook, Director of NOAH, "and should help reinforce public confidence in British food".

Against this very positive background, NOAH was most disappointed to find that the Soil Association has used this report as an excuse for yet another attack on the Government, British food and farming and the use of antibiotic "Growth Promoters".

"We totally deplore the Soil Association's cynical and opportunistic attempts to denigrate British farmers and the continuing success of Britain's residue monitoring system, simply for the commercial gain of their members", said Roger Cook.

It is important to remember that the Soil Association represents Organic farmers who, for years, have sought to justify the high prices they demand for their products by criticising the produce of conventional British farmers. They have a vested interest in maintaining public anxiety about British food.

In spite of the increasingly strident assertions of the Soil Association, the hard facts, confirmed by a wide range of impartial organisations including the World Health Organisation, the EU Commission's Scientific Committee on Animal Nutrition and the House of Lords Committee on Science and Technology are that there is no proven link between the use of specially selected, growth promoting antibiotics, licensed under EU law, and the tragic rise of antibiotic resistance in human hospitals.

As WHO reported last year, this rise is widely recognised as being "Primarily the result of misuse and over use in human medicine".

5 August 1998

Notes for Editors

1. For further information contact Roger Cook or Alison Glennon at NOAH, tel. +44 (0)181 367 3131
2. The National Office of Animal Health was formed on 1 January 1986 to represent the UK companies which research, develop, manufacture and market licensed animal health products. The association now represents 53 companies which in 1997 accounted for around 95% of the £379 million UK animal health market, with additional valuable exports.
3. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (an Agency of MAFF) published its Annual Report on Surveillance for Veterinary Residues, 1997, on 20 July 1998. ISBN 0 953 1234 1 3.
4. Soil Association press release 24 July.