Reframing the Story of Antibiotic Use in Animal Agriculture

Successes shouldn’t just be measured by antibiotic doses administered.

It’s time to change the definition of stewardship for antibiotics, said Michelle Kromm, DVM, MPH, Food Forward LLC, during the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s 2024 Stakeholders Summit.

“We need to acknowledge what stewardship is – and is not. Stewardship is not the measurement of antimicrobials. Stewardship is what we do almost every day – as producers and veterinarians – to avoid the use of antimicrobials in the first place,” she said.

The actual story of antibiotic use is much richer than consumers may believe. It includes manure management, cleaning feed bunkers, vaccination programs developed with veterinarians, good nutrition and well-ventilated facilities. All those things help keep animals healthy.

“It’s hard to talk about because we don’t really have established metrics to help communicate the efforts that are going on below the surface, which is rolled up into the term of preventive medicine. We have preventive health care in veterinary medicine, too! We need to spend more time talking about the avoidance of antimicrobials,” Kromm said.

On the other hand, measuring and comparing antimicrobials administered is a number that is easy to compare across industries. It tells a simple, but incomplete, story.

“If we talk about prevention and broaden out the context, the actual number (of antimicrobials administered) becomes less important. We are able to communicate about all the practices that are uniform across our different sectors that we work on to make sure our animals are healthy and safe on a regular basis.”

Diagnostics

There are areas the industry can improve upon. For example, the decision to treat animals with antimicrobials can be informed by advanced diagnostics, including sensitivity testing to ensure the antibiotic selected will effectively treat the pathogen. Today, most farms select their antimicrobials based on a formulary perspective. For example, a disease presentation is often treated with an antibiotic known to work on the farm.

“We need to get more thoughtful about doing more sensitivity testing so when we choose an antimicrobial off the shelf, we know that match between the bug and drug is a good one from day one,” she said. “Not that we are going to have to run through different treatment options because the first one didn’t work.”

Meeting consumer demands

Filling in the information gap can help producers and veterinarians address trade-offs as well. Operations may
choose to participate in “no antibiotics ever” programs or “raised without antibiotics” programs.

“Treatment of a sick animal is in-line with welfare practices, which means we’re missing some of the story here,” Kromm said. “If we fill in the gap (communicating about) preventative medicine, those programs look a lot alike.”

There is tremendous overlap between animals raised in a “no antibiotics ever” program to animals raised in a “conventional” program when prevention practices are included in the conversation. This can give consumers more confidence in making their grocery store decisions.

“Consumer choice is important, but I would like us to stop and think about how we could talk about antimicrobial stewardship differently if there wasn’t a package label involved.”

A global perspective

During the summit, Alex Rinkus with HealthforAnimals, a global animal health association, noted animal health companies are shifting their resources to prevention of disease, rather than treatment. However, antibiotics are still necessary to combat disease around the world.

Growth in vaccine sales nearly mirror the reduction in antibiotic use. When animals need fewer antibiotics, resistance remains low. The ultimate goal is protecting human health and maintaining global food security.

“Too often, folks talk about the use of antibiotics. What we want to talk about is the need for antibiotics, and that is disease. When we look at the numbers, animals need fewer antibiotics than ever before. This is just a small piece of the puzzle.”

Key points

• Certain classes of antimicrobials and antibiotics can have applications across both animal and human health.
• Across the world, livestock vaccinations have increased, while antibiotics administered have decreased.
• Communicating common disease prevention measures to consumers may help reframe antibiotic use statistics.

Photo credit: istockphoto.com/Clinton Austin