The overuse of antibiotics in domestic animals, and not just livestock, needs to be considered if antibiotic microbial resistance is to be tackled in the long term, a conference of doctors and veterinary surgeons was told this week.

Prescribing of antibiotics across Europe is returning to the high levels of the 1990s, Peter Hawkey, from the Public Health Laboratory in the University of Birmingham, told the conference in London, which was organised jointly by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

Susan Dawson, head of the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Liverpool, said that half of all …