asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action is now proposed to implement the recommendations of the Swann Committee on the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry and medicine.
The United Kingdom Health Ministers propose shortly to make regulations under the Therapeutic Substances Act, 1956, providing that the retail sale or supply of feedingstuffs containing certain antibiotics shall be unlawful unless on prescription or in accordance with the written authority of a veterinary surgeon or practitioner. These regulations will apply to penicillin, chlortetracycline and oxytetracycline from 1st March, 1971, and to tylosin, the sulphonamides as a group and four nitrofurans—nitrofurazone, furazolidone, nitrofurantoin and furaltadone—with effect from 1st September, 1971. Regulations will also be made so that as from 1st March, 1971, flavomycin and virginiamycin can be used as feed antibiotics available without prescription though subject to some conditions, including the extent and method of use.
Regulations will also be made, operative from 1st September, 1971, so that the use of the two sulphonamides—sulphaquinoxaline and sulphanitran—as coccidiostats will be possible without prescription or written authority. The present available evidence does not however permit sulphaquinoxaline to be cleared for use at a higher rate than 75 parts per million. The regulations will therefore permit the use of sulphaquinoxaline free of prescription or written authority, up to this level pending consideration of further data which the manufacturers will be asked to supply.
The use of sulphanilamide as a powdered wound dressing for animals will also be permitted free of prescription or written authority.