There aren't many reasons to be thankful to the European Union, I think. But the ban on certain antibiotics in animal feed is certainly one of them.

No conclusive evidence has yet been produced to demonstrate that the residues of these drugs in meat could lead to human beings building up resistance to antibiotics used to treat people. But it surely has to be more than a possibility.

It's already known that over-generous use of antibiotics by doctors to treat minor human ailments has led to bacteria adapting to survive. So the doctors have had to switch to other antibiotics to treat those ailments, and the bacteria have adapted again.

In fact, as I understand it, there are some bacteria which have proved so successful at adapting that there are now hardly any antibiotics left with which to kill them off. And if they adapt further to protect themselves against even those...?

We mess around with Nature at our peril. And routinely feeding cocktails of antibiotics to millions of animals which don't necessarily need them is messing around on a grand scale.

A spokesman for the drugs manufacturers on television the other day came up with the spurious claim that producing healthy animals in this way led to healthy humans. Well, it might. But I think that in the long term it probably might not.

What producing healthy animals by pumping them full of antibiotics does do is produce healthy profits for the drugs companies and boost the income of the currently hard-pressed farming industry. And it also cuts the cost of the meat on the family table.

Basically, it has more to do with money than with either animal or human welfare.

What the ban will do, hopefully, is lead to more sensible, less intensive, more humane meat production. It will cost the farmers more, certainly. And they will pass on that cost to the consumer who will have the choice of paying up, eating less meat, or doing what a growing number of people are doing and going meat-free.

Tim Yeo, the Shadow agriculture minister, has argued that the ban will put European farmers at a financial disadvantage compared to those in other countries which still use the antibiotics.

Well, yes it might. But again it will be up to the consumers, won't it, to decide what they want: EU drug-reduced meat or dubious meat from elsewhere at a lower price. So long as the country of origin is always made clear, there shouldn't be a problem.

Well done, EU. And that's not something you'll read on this page very often!

Enjoy Mike Priestley's Yorkshire Walks

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.