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The use of modern antibiotics on British farms has risen dramatically in the past decade, fuelling the development of resistant organisms and weakening the power of human medicine to cure disease.

Three classes of antibiotics rated as “critically important in human medicine” by the World Health Organisation – cephalosporins, fluouroquinolones and macrolides – have increased in use by up to eightfold in the animal population over the past decade.

Over the same period, livestock numbers have fallen, by 27 per cent in the case of pigs, 10 per cent for cattle and 11 per cent for poultry. Experts say intensive farming, with thousands of animals reared in cramped conditions driven by price pressure imposed by the big supermarket chains, means infections spread faster and the need for antibiotics is greater. The widespread use of antibiotics in livestock farming is recognised as a major contributor to the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Last month British scientists identified a new type of MRSA in milk, the first time the resistant organism had been found in farm animals in the UK. Although the superbug is killed by pasteurisation, there are fears it could spread from cattle to humans.

Resistant genes for toxic forms of E.coli can jump from animal to human strains. The outbreak of a virulent antibiotic-resistant strain of E.coli in Germany last month, which has claimed 39 lives and left more than 3,300 people requiring hospital treatment, has been blamed on the overuse of antibiotics in farming.

The developments highlight the global threat from the spread of untreatable superbugs. An estimated 25,000 people die each year in the European Union from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to the WHO.