None of the UK’s large supermarket chains are ensuring their suppliers use antibiotics in the most responsible way, an assessment by campaigners has found, despite heightened concerns about their overuse in farm animals.
Supermarkets play an important role in the fight against superbugs, because most of the world’s antibiotics are used on livestock and retailers can enforce strict standards on the farm suppliers they use. Resistant bacteria known as superbugs are rapidly developing, posing an increasing risk to human health.
But livestock farmers have an incentive to use more antibiotics on their herds, because intensive farming conditions can lead to an increased risk of disease. In some countries, antibiotics are used routinely, to promote growth as well as treat diseases that otherwise run rife in intensive systems.
In the UK, new regulations were introduced this year to restrict the use of antibiotics in farming, as British farmers are no longer covered by strict EU rules. The law stipulates that antibiotics must not be used to compensate for poor hygiene or inadequate animal husbandry.
However, research by the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics (ASOA), examining the practices of the biggest supermarket chains, has found significant gaps in the implementation of the rules.
The assessment, published on Friday, is the fourth in a series of such reports carried out by ASOA since 2017. It ranks supermarkets based on a checklist of criteria, including whether the supermarket has a target on cutting antibiotic use; what policies the supermarket has in place to ensure antibiotics are only used when necessary; what produce these policies cover; and whether the supermarket monitors antibiotic use in its supply chain.
Most supermarket policies cover only their own-brand goods, and none of the 10 examined in the ASOA report have published full data on antibiotics detailing use of the medicines by each farm supplier.
Cóilín Nunan, a policy and science manager at ASOA, said: “Globally, it is estimated that about two-thirds of all antibiotics are used in farm animals. Yet supermarkets are often not checking whether imported food they are selling has been produced with routine antibiotic use. This is unfair on UK farmers, who are held to higher standards. More importantly, it is a threat to the health of consumers.”
Marks & Spencer came out on top in the ranking system, which awarded green for good practice, red for poor and amber for when a criterion was partly met. M&S had 10 green ticks of a possible 12, and two amber. Waitrose and Tesco also scored highly, in joint second place, falling down only on failing to provide full information on antibiotic use.
M&S and Morrisons are the only supermarkets to fully ban the powerful antibiotic colistin, which the World Health Organization has said should be reserved as a drug of last resort for human use; Waitrose and Tesco have only partly achieved this.
Most supermarkets continue to sell fast-growing breeds of broiler chickens, which require six to nine times more antibiotics for each bird than slower-growing breeds. M&S is alone in selling only slower-growing broilers, though Waitrose has committed to doing so from 2026.
The other supermarkets examined were Aldi, Asda, the Co-op, Iceland, Lidl and Sainsbury’s.
Nunan said while the report had revealed progress made by several supermarkets over recent years in cutting antibiotic use and putting more robust policies in place, there were still serious gaps. He said the overuse of antibiotics on farm animals should be of much higher concern to the global guardians of human health, and that the UK must enforce its regulations.
“It is no longer legal to use antibiotics to prop up farming methods that are causing animals to fall sick. So to avoid misusing antibiotics, and to keep animals healthy, supermarkets must now take strong and urgent action to improve animal husbandry and welfare,” he said.
Since 2014, antibiotic use on UK farms has been reduced by 59%, while the use of the most critically important antibiotics has been cut even more drastically, by 81%.
This week, the rise of superbugs and the need to safeguard antibiotics was discussed at the UN, and alarms were raised by some of the world’s leading scientists that overuse and careless use of antibiotics around the world was fuelling antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Ron Daniels, the vice-president of the Global Sepsis Alliance, said the fight against superbugs must be extended to farms and cheap meat. “Antibiotics are the bedrock on which we have built much of modern medicine. Without these vital medicines the risk of routine procedures, like elective surgery or cancer chemotherapy, will skyrocket,” he said.
“The stark reality is that multi-drug-resistant bugs are causing life-threatening infections in thousands of patients in our hospitals today, with many sadly dying as a consequence of sepsis. That is why all of society needs to urgently come together to address the drivers for rising rates of AMR urgently and cohesively, including addressing our desire to consume meat produced in intensive farming.”
Devina Sankhla, food policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium, said: “BRC members work closely with farmers and suppliers and advocate the principles set by the Responsible Use of Medicines Alliance in Agriculture to ensure antibiotics are responsibly used in food production. Suppliers must follow all legal requirements on the acceptable use of antibiotics, balancing animal welfare with the reduction and refinement of antibiotic use in UK agriculture.”
An Iceland spokesperson disputed the findings, saying it publishes its policies directly to its suppliers and not publicly. The spokesperson said Iceland’s policy restricts the use of highest priority critically important antibiotics including colistin, and that it adheres to UK and EU regulations.