The World Health Organisation says farmers and the food industry should stop using antibiotics routinely.
The WHO says its new recommendations aim to help preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics that are important for human medicine by reducing their unnecessary use in animals. In some countries, approximately 80 per cent of total consumption of medically important antibiotics is in the animal sector, largely for growth promotion in healthy animals, it says.
The WHO said in a statement over-use and misuse of antibiotics in animals and humans was contributing to the rising threat of antibiotic resistance. It said some types of bacteria that cause serious infections in humans had already developed resistance to most or all of the available treatments, and there were very few promising options in the research pipeline.
"A lack of effective antibiotics is as serious a security threat as a sudden and deadly disease outbreak," said WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
A systematic review published this week in The Lancet Planetary Health found that interventions that restrict antibiotic use in food-producing animals reduced antibiotic-resistant bacteria in these animals by up to 39 per cent.
