Former RUMA Agriculture Chair, Gwyn Jones has been awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to animal health and welfare in the King’s New Years Honours List. Gwyn has spent more than 30 years championing practical, industry-led progress on farm animal health and welfare, bridging hands-on livestock farming with national policy and strategy work.
Brought up on a farm in North Wales, Gwyn has been based in West Sussex for more than 40 years where he ran a successful dairy farm for 30 years. He now runs a mixed enterprise with his daughter.
Reacting to the news of his award, Gwyn says: “It is a privilege and honour to have been awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) in The King’s New Year Honours List. I would never have expected this and was incredibly surprised. In everything that I do it’s always a team effort, and I have been fortunate to always have good people on my teams over the years.”
The current RUMA Agriculture Chair, Cat McLaughlin, who took over from Gwyn, says: “On behalf of everyone involved in RUMA Agriculture we send our congratulations to Gwyn on the awarding of this honour. Throughout his career Gwyn has dedicated his time to representing UK farming and still does so today, playing a significant role in, or contributing towards influencing the direction, activities and impacts of numerous organisations. A more recent addition to his portfolio of work sees him leading our sibling organisation, RUMA Companion Animal & Equine (RUMA CA&E); this means his skillset and influence is now extending beyond farming and agriculture to support the companion animal and equine sectors drive responsible medicines strategies particularly focused on antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) and sustainable parasiticides strategies.”
Alongside his own farming business Gwyn has dedicated his time to representing UK farming and has held a myriad of positions in his commitment as an advocate for UK farming, farmers, and the sectors across the industry. These roles have also been about driving innovations and promoting the highest standards of food safety, animal health and animal welfare in the British livestock industry.
Under his RUMA Agriculture chairmanship (2013-2020), the Alliance underwent a transformation to deliver wider promotion of the responsible use of medicines in UK livestock. A particular landmark of this transition was RUMA Agriculture’s response to the Lord O’Neil report to the UK Government, which shone a light on the global AMR challenge. In response to the challenge for UK Agriculture to play its part in the One Health response to AMR, RUMA Agriculture with Gwyn at the helm, established the Targets Task Force (TTF) in 2016. This group included one vet and one farmer from each of the livestock sectors and became known as the RUMA Targets Task Force (TTF). RUMA Agriculture subsequently published its first set of livestock antibiotic use targets in 2017, which were unique and ground-breaking at the time. A second phase of TTF targets were introduced in 2020 again under the leadership of Gwyn, and a third cycle was launched last year under the leadership of the current Chair, Cat Mclaughlin. The leadership of RUMA Agriculture to establish and drive the TTF, led to the creation and ownership of AMR reduction targets across all UK farmed livestock sectors. This has been instrumental in the reduction of antibiotic use across UK livestock sectors which has reduced by 57% between 2014 and 2024. The UK is now one of the lowest users of antibiotics in Europe. The story of the RUMA Targets Task Force is one of the key success factors identified and recognised in the UK’s active and voluntary approach to tackling AMR in an FAO Case study report on the UK – Case study series: United Kingdom | Antimicrobial Resistance | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The RUMA TTF has resulted in an impressive infrastructure which has achieved significant reductions in the use of antibiotics; indeed UK livestock efforts continue to drive positive results in tackling AMR, with antibiotic use remaining low and the long-term AMR surveillance work carried out by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) showing that multi-drug resistance in animals is at its lowest level in a decade.
Towards the end of his formal tenure as Chair of RUMA Agriculture, Gwyn was instrumental in establishing a sibling organisation to address the responsible use of medicines in Companion Animals and Equines (RUMA CA&E), and he became its first Chair in 2020. RUMA CA&E is now the ‘go to’ organisation on the responsible use of medicines in the companion animal and equine sectors and the Alliance has recently launched the first ever set of antimicrobial use targets for cats and dogs.