Dr Garcia-Alvarez said finding a new strain in both in humans and cows is 'very worrying' 
 
 A new strain of the MRSA "superbug" has been found in British cows and is believed to be infecting humans. 
 
 Environmental campaigners say the new strain has emerged because of the over-use of antibiotics by dairy farmers. 
 
 Dr Mark Holmes of Cambridge University, who led the research, said this was a "credible hypothesis". 
 
 The researchers, writing in the Lancet Infectious Diseases Journal, say there is no additional health risk from eating milk and dairy products. 
 
 'Financial pressure' 
 
 MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a drug-resistant form of a usually harmless bacterium which can be deadly when it infects wounds. 
 
 The 35 or so strains of antibiotic-resistant superbugs are genetically fairly similar. However, this new variety is very different and it is thought that it might have first emerged from cows. 
 
 Its discoverers have dubbed it "new MRSA" 
 
 Antibiotics are widely used by dairy farmers to treat cows with mastitis. However, over-use means some bacteria become resistant and difficult to treat if humans become infected. 
 
 Dr Holmes said the problem might be exacerbated by financial pressures on dairy farmers. 
 
 "If you drive your cows harder to produce more milk, you get more mastitis," he told reporters at a news conference. 
 
 The Soil Association has called for a complete ban on routine use of antibiotics in farming. 
 
 Soil Association director Helen Browning said: "Dairy systems are becoming ever more antibiotic-dependent. We need to get farmers off this treadmill, even if that means that milk has to cost a few pennies more". 
 
 It does appear that the numbers are rising Dr Mark Holmes, Cambridge University 
 
 National Farmers' Union chief dairy adviser Rob Newberry said the health and welfare of cows were of "paramount importance" to British dairy farmers. 
 
 "In the interests of human and animal health, and animal welfare, it is important that veterinary medicines are administered as little as possible but as much as necessary," he said. 
 
 "Any antibiotic or veterinary medicine being administered to a food-producing animal has strict conditions of use, including milk and meat withdrawal times, and in general, under European law, would only be available under prescription." 
 
 Dr Holmes and his colleague Dr Laura Garcia-Alvarez discovered the new strain while studying a bacterium known to cause mastitis in cows. 
 
 They found that, like other MRSA strains, it was resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics. However, the bug was found to be genetically very different. 
 
 Subsequent research showed that the strain was also present in humans. 
 
 Dr Garcia-Alvarez says that finding a new strain in both humans and cows is "very worrying". 
 
 "Workers on dairy farms are at higher risk of carrying MRSA but we don't yet know if this translates to a higher risk [of them becoming ill]," she said. 
 
 'Very low risk' 
 
 Dr Holmes said very few people had been infected with the new strain, probably fewer than 100 a year in the UK. "But it does appear that the numbers are rising," he says. 
 
 The Health Protection Agency said the risk of becoming infected with the new strain was "very low". 
 
 Dr Holmes and Dr Garcia-Alvarez will now investigate the prevalence of the new strain and whether it is more or less harmful than current strains. 
 
 They also plan to conduct studies on farms to look for more MRSA strains of this type and explore any potential risks to farm workers. 
 
 MRSA is often found in hospitals and was linked to 1,593 deaths in 2007. 
 
 Since then, the number of suspected fatal cases has fallen dramatically. There were 1,290 in 2008 and 781 in 2009. 
 
 A Department of Health spokesman said: "From the available evidence, we understand this new form of MRSA is rare in the UK and is not causing infections in humans. 
 
 "However, our expert committee, ARHAI, will be reviewing this issue at their next meeting and will consider potential medical, veterinary and food safety issues." 
 
 A Food Standards Agency spokesman said the study did not provide direct evidence that humans were being infected with MRSA from cattle. 
 
 "The risk of contracting this new strain of MRSA through drinking milk is extremely low because the vast majority of cows' milk is pasteurised and the pasteurisation process destroys all types of MRSA," he added. ||||| Scientists in the UK have discovered a new strain of MRSA that appears to spread to humans from cattle and can cause life-threatening illness. 
 
 The drug-resistant strain was identified in cows' milk during a study of the udder infection mastitis in dairy herds. It is the first time any form of the MRSA – or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – has been found on British farms. 
 
 The new strain of the "superbug" has caused a small number of serious blood infections and more minor conditions in people, but health officials have downplayed the risk to the general population because standard tests in UK hospitals should detect the organism. 
 
 It is not known how the patients became infected with the new strain, but a likely route would be through contact with infected cattle or people who work with the animals. 
 
 Dr Mark Holmes, a veterinary scientist who led the study at the University of Cambridge, said milk from infected cows was safe to drink because the bug, along with other bacteria, was killed by pasteurisation. More than 99% of milk consumed in the UK is pasteurised. The bug was unlikely to survive in unpasteurised cheese, Holmes added. 
 
 But the presence of MRSA in the national herd will put farm workers at risk of becoming carriers of the infection and spreading it to the wider community. Early tests suggest the strain has spread to nearly 3% of dairy farms in the UK. A more extensive survey of British farms will begin this summer. 
 
 Roughly a third of the human population already carries S. aureus in their noses or on their skin, with around 1% of this being the drug-resistant form MRSA. The bug does not usually cause problems unless it infects broken skin. 
 
 The discovery of the new strain has led to calls for a rethink of how antibiotics are used on farms. The drugs are given to treat mastitis and other infections in cattle, but overuse encourages resistant bacterial strains to emerge. 
 
 The Cambridge group stumbled on the new strain of MRSA while testing milk from a farm in southwest England in 2007. Further work established that the strain existed at dairy farms across the UK. The same strain was later found among samples of S. aureus taken from people in Scotland, England, Ireland, Denmark and Germany. The oldest came from a Danish patient in 1975, implying the strain has gone unnoticed for at least 35 years. 
 
 According to a report in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, the bug appears to be on the rise, with the number of human cases in England and Scotland increasing from one in 2002 to nine in 2009 and 12 last year. "Whether we are looking at the beginning of a small peak, or a curve that will continue to rise, we don't know, but it does appear to be rising at the moment," Holmes said. 
 
 While the new strain can be detected by standard hospital tests in Britain, it is not picked up by the "gold standard" test used to confirm borderline cases of MRSA, because it has a different genetic make-up to the normal strain. One concern is that hospitals on the continent, which rely only on the latter test, will fail to detect the strain. 
 
 A spokesman for Dairy UK said the industry group had met with Holmes and was working with the university to expand its research. 
 
 "In the extremely rare cases where infection has occurred, this has been through physical contact, either cattle to cattle or cattle to people, and through cuts or open wounds and not through consumption of milk. The scrupulous hygiene practised by Britain's dairy farmers minimises risks of transmission," a spokesman for Dairy UK said. 
 
 Helen Browning, director of the organic food trade group the Soil Association, said the finding highlighted the need to minimise antibiotic use on farms. 
 
 "In the relentless drive for increased per animal productivity, and under acute price pressure, dairy systems are becoming ever more antibiotic dependent. We need to get farmers off this treadmill, even if that means that milk has to cost a few pennies more. That would be a very small price to pay for maintaining the efficacy of these life-saving drugs," she said.
– A new strain of the drug-resistant "superbug" MRSA has been found in British cows, and it appears to be spreading to people. The strain, identified in cows' milk by researchers studying udder infections, is genetically very different from the dozens of other strains of superbug identified, reports the BBC. Pasteurization kills the bug so milk drinkers shouldn't worry, the researchers say, but farm workers could be at risk of becoming carriers of the infection and could conceivably pass it on to others. Illnesses that cross the species barrier can be particularly lethal. Finding a new MRSA strain in both humans and cows is "very worrying," said one of the researchers who discovered the phenomenon. Environmental groups say the discovery of the bug shows that the problem of antibiotic overuse at farms needs to be addressed, the Guardian notes. "Dairy systems are becoming ever more antibiotic-dependent," the director of the Soil Association says. "We need to get farmers off this treadmill, even if that means that milk has to cost a few pennies more."