Resistance to antibiotics in animals in Danish herds may become a problem over time for the health of both animals and humans. The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries has therefore awarded DKK 11 million (€1.5 million) to two comprehensive research projects with the purpose of developing new ways of combating resistant bacteria in animals.

Among other things, the research projects will study how resistant bacteria are transmitted from animals to humans, and develop better methods to identify the resistant bacteria in individual herds.

Food Minister, Eva Kjer Hansen, said: "It is important that we know how to prevent multi-resistant bacteria from developing and spreading if we are to be able to treat pneumonia, for instance, effectively in the future. Therefore we need to know more about how resistant bacteria spread in herds, among herds and, in the worst case, from animals to humans."

The Minister will appear before the Danish Parliamentary Committee on Food, Agriculture and Fisheries on Thursday to answer questions about the use of antibiotics in animal production.

The two new research projects are led by researchers from the Technical University of Denmark in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen and the State Serum Institute. The two projects are part of a large (DKK 85 million) research programme funded by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and initiated in January 2010.