Countries are being urged to impose an immediate ban on the use of “last resort” antibiotics as growth promoters in animals in a bid to combat superbugs.

A report from the World Organisation for Animal Health (known as OIE) has found that 45 countries out of 155 that provided data are still giving antibiotics to animals as a way of fattening them up, despite the fact the practice is banned in many parts of the world.

And a high number of countries are still using drugs classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as antibiotics of last resort – that is, treatments that should only be used when everything else has failed or in specific circumstances.

The practice of using antibiotics as growth promoters was outlawed by the European Union in 2006 and the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2017.

The misuse of antibiotics in animals – coupled with overuse in humans – is behind the spread of antibiotic resistance, which in 2015 is estimated to have killed 33,000 people in Europe.