UK medics call for government ban to cut antibiotic resistance

Exclusive: failure to enforce ban on preventive use on farms would 'pose risk to human health'

• Letter: UK must commit to ban on preventive use of antibiotics in animals

The leaders of the UK's main medical associations have taken the unprecedented step of writing to the government to call for changes in the way farm animals are medicated, out of fear that current practices are causing resistance to antibiotics used in human medicine.

Eleven of the UK's most senior medics, including the presidents of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Faculty of Public Health, have signed the letter to the secretaries of state for health and environment.