Late on Thursday, just days after industry antibiotics campaign group RUMA announced that use of ‘last resort’ antibiotic colistin dropped significantly in the pig industry in 2016, researchers from the University of Leicester have suggested an alternative to antibiotic use to treat disease in livestock animals.

The Leicester research looked into using bacteriophages - a range of viruses that can kill disease-causing bacteria - as an alternative to antibiotics to treat common infections in livestock. The aim of the research was to come up with an alternative to antibiotics which are also used in human medicine, and which are under threat from growing resistance, even to treatments used as a last line of defence.

The study, led by Professor Martha Clokie and funded by levy board AHDB Pork, has determined that phage could accompany or replace the use of antibiotics across all livestock sectors, though the initial research project looked at treatment in pigs.

Researchers isolated 20 bacteriophages that combatted 72 multi-antibiotic resistant strains of the most important causes of gut problems in pigs. What’s more, the scientists were able to dry out the phages to form a powder which could be given to animals in feed.

The Leicester researcher said bacteriophages (or phages) are much more specific than antibiotics and are used outside of the West to treat a whole range of bacterial infections, many of which do not respond to conventional antibiotics.

In the UK, 40% of all antibiotics are used to treat animals, and campaign groups have been putting mounting pressure on farm groups to reduce antibiotic use in livestock. Though industry groups continue to deny mounting evidence that the use of antibiotics in farming has links to resistance in human medicine, the UK government’s 2015 O’Neil Review on antimicrobial resistance contained concrete recommendations to tackle resistance in the farm sector.

On Thursday, Leicester University Professor Martha Clokie, who worked on the AHDB-funded research, said, "There are many infections that we just can't treat with antibiotics because they have become resistant to them. So using the phage therapy for specific diseases could change the way we treat infection.”

She added that early results indicated that phage therapy could be "completely transformative for human health" and that if trials in pigs work, the new therapy could be extended to treat people.

Professor Clokie and colleagues produced a video outlining their findings, which can be viewed below: