A letter has been sent to farming minister George Eustice surrounding industry fears about the high level of antibiotic use in imported meat from the US.
The letter was sent by the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics regarding the Mr Eustice's meeting with Chief Medical Officer for England, Sally Davies.
In particular, it seeks to find whether the outcome of his discussion will allay "widely held fears" about the import of meat from the US.
US meat is produced with an average of five times as much antibiotic treatment as used in UK livestock production.
Figures published at a Royal Society of Medicine conference in February this year show that antibiotic use in the US is a staggering 9 to 16 times higher per livestock unit for beef cattle, three times higher for chickens, twice as high for pigs and five times higher for turkeys than it is in the UK.
The Alliance's letter says: "We are concerned that future trade deals may serve to undermine the good work done by UK farmers in recent years to reduce the amount of antibiotics we use in UK livestock production.
"I am sure you will agree that the global threat of antibiotic resistance is of grave concern, and increased trading with nations such as the US, where agricultural antibiotic use is at extraordinarily high levels, would be totally unacceptable to medical opinion and the British public.
"In light of the disastrous public health consequences of such profligate use of these vital medicines, the issue warrants more concern than the much-talked about the use of chlorine to wash chicken, or the high levels of growth hormones in US cattle.
"Both of these are very serious human health and animal welfare issues, but neither pose the same level of threat to the future of human medicine as we see in US livestock farming’s over-use of antibiotics."
Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies has regularly and publicly warned about the rising global threat of antibiotic resistance.
The letter follows the release of targets created to further reduce antibiotic use across the UK's key livestock sectors, announced last year.
