Antibiotics that were banned on US chicken farms a decade ago over links to the spread of potentially deadly bacteria in humans are being used in significantly increased quantities by the British poultry industry, an investigation has revealed.
Industry figures obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism show that UK poultry producers raised their use of a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones by 59 per cent in the latest 12-month reporting period – despite evidence that they could be fuelling drug resistant forms of dangerous food poisoning illnesses in humans, including campylobacter, salmonella and E.coli.
