FOI - EU approach on antimicrobial consumption methods
Published 13 January 2026
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ATI1122 Request
Referring to the minutes of the DARC meeting on 25 March 2025, you asked for information on the DARC committee discussion regarding whether the UK should be adopting the EU approaches on antimicrobial consumption methods.
Our reply
The Freedom of Information Act provides access to the information, not necessarily the document itself. In this case, the information you requested is provided below:
The topic of discussion was the EU Guidance on using a new mg/kg metric which can be found here - Guideline on the reporting of antimicrobial sales and use in animals at the EU level – denominators and indicators. The committee agreed to use the EU metric in the upcoming VARSS report for reporting both antibiotic sales and use data, accompanied by sufficient context and explanation. Please refer to the published UK-VARSS 2024 report to see how this agreement at DARC was taken forward, which is available here - Veterinary Antimicrobial Resistance and Sales Surveillance 2024 - GOV.UK.