46074 (2024). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister for Food Safety

46074 (2024). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister for Food Safety: What progress, if any, has been made in the quarter January to March 2024 to ‘Encourage alternative approaches to reduce infection and the need for antimicrobial use in animals’ under ‘Objective 3: Infection Prevention and Control’ within the New Zealand Antimicrobial Resistance Action Plan 2017?

Hon Andrew Hoggard: The Objective 3 activity has been included in the Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI) Draft Animal and Plant Sector Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Implementation Plan, which has been developed to continue the MPI AMR work programme aligned with the objectives in the second New Zealand National AMR Action Plan. The second New Zealand National AMR Action Plan is currently under development, as the first five-year Plan covered 2017-2022. MPI’s Animal and Plant Sector AMR Implementation Plan was consulted with MPI’s Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination Group (AMRCG) during March 2024. The MPI AMR implementation plan describes the animal and plant health sectors’ priority activities, desired outcomes, measurable targets within relevant timeframes, and identifies facilitating and supporting organisations for these activities. The activity to ‘Encourage alternative approaches to reduce infection and the need for antimicrobial use in animals’ has been assigned to be facilitated by AMRCG, with a deliverable for AMRCG members to investigate and report alternative disease prevention strategies annually to the AMRCG meetings.