‘For just the fourth time in its 72-year history, the United Nations General Assembly has focused on a health issue: the rise of “superbugs” and antibiotic-resistant infections. These pose a “fundamental threat” to society, said then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and are inspiring a fresh sense of urgency to find solutions.

‘The livestock sector has played an important role in creating this emerging health threat. It can also help stop it. . . .

‘Unless we take effective action, we could run out of effective ways to treat some of the world’s most serious diseases.

‘We have recently seen worrying evidence in China and in the US of E. coli, a common bacterium, that is resistant to the last line of antibiotic defense, a 1950s drug called colistin. . . .

Two-thirds of human infectious diseases originate in animals. And drug resistance that starts in animals may follow into…