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Bacteria are finally overrunning our last defenses. Can we stop them? [collection of articles]

Farmers and ranchers will for the first time be required to get a prescription from a veterinarian before using antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and other animals, federal food regulators announced on Wednesday. Officials hope the move will slow the indiscriminate use of the drugs, which has made them increasingly ineffective in humans.

A strain of Salmonella resistant to the most powerful antibiotics has been found in the UK, France and Denmark. The outbreak emerged in Africa then spread to Europe, picking up antibiotic resistance along the way, says a team of international researchers. They are calling on health officials to step up monitoring to stop the "superbug" spreading globally.

For several years, public health officials have been concerned that gonorrhea, one of the most prevalent STDs in the world, might become resistant to the last widely available antibiotics used to treat it, a class of drugs called cephalosporins.