Drugs contribute to rise of untreatable bacteria in humans – but farmers say production would be 'impossible' without them

Vets and MPs have urged the government and pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs for animals to avoid the growing human resistance to antibiotics.

The call follows warnings from David Cameron, the UK's chief medical officer Dame Sally Evans and the World Health Organisation that medicine could soon be "cast back into the dark ages" if action is not taken to tackle the rise of untreatable bacteria.

But farmers who routinely add antibiotics to animal feed and water to avoid illness among livestock and boost growth rates told the House of Commons science and technology committee that if antibiotics for animals were banned "it would make pig production in the UK pretty much impossible".

Catherine McLaughlin, animal health policy adviser at the National Farmers' Union, told MPs that when the poultry industry stopped using some antibiotics last year they had to raise their hygiene standards to be "better than hospitals" to reduce the increased mortality rate in young chicks.

MPs said they were worried that total veterinary use of tetracycline antibiotics had increased nearly tenfold and that of penicillin nearly fivefold since 1969.

"Antibiotic use in pigs and poultry in the Nordic countries is three to five times lower than it is in the UK. These countries have much lower levels of resistance in food poisoning bacteria than that found in many EU countries," said MPs in a report published on Monday.

The committee heard that it was unclear how far antimicrobial resistance originating in farm animals was contributing to antibiotic resistance in humans, but said the government should take a precautionary approach. "There is circumstantial evidence that AMR can be transmitted from animal pathogens to human pathogens although the evidence base is incomplete. The government needs to ensure this is addressed.

'We recommend that this is an additional focus of research in the action plan and that in the meantime, government takes action to ensure the use of antibiotics in farm animals is strictly required for therapeutic use," the committee said.

Meanwhile, health experts said doctors, nurses and pharmacists should say no to patients who ask for prescriptions for minor illnesses as the current approach to antibiotics is no longer effective and can be dangerous.

They called for a radical new approach if antibiotics are to remain effective to combat more serious illnesses and diseases in the future.

In joint guidance on antimicrobial resistance, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH) also called on patients to take some responsibility for strengthening their defences against disease by considering alternatives to antibiotics or allowing minor viral infections to clear up in their own time.

Andrew Miller, chair of the science and technology committee, said: "The link between human and animal pathogens antibiotic resistance has not been conclusively proven, but we believe the government should be taking precautionary action to ensure that antibiotics are only being used on sick animals."

But it emerged that the government does not know which antibiotics are being used in which animals and where the resistance problems in animals are.

"Some countries have been collecting this data for 15 years, but the UK still has very basic data, and we need much more precise data if we are actually to understand the problem," said the committee.

MPs heard that some of the resistances seen in human medicines had come out of environmental bacteria, which were then transferred into bacteria that are pathogenic to humans.

"Resistant bacteria from human sources have been detected in all stages of the sewage treatment process, including in treated water released to the environment and sludge applied to farmland," the committee heard.

Peter Jones, former president of the British Veterinary Association, said the pipeline for new antibiotics in both human and animal health is at an all-time low.

"Antibiotics are vital for both human and animal health but it is clear that we must also find ways to develop new antibiotics in veterinary medicine," he said.