Breaking the stalemate: Non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture

The continued effectiveness of antibiotics is critical to a nation's health. Each year, antibiotics are used to treat a host of diseases across the population; 304 per 1,000 adults a year receive antibiotics via outpatient settings. Over 18 million emergency department receive antibiotics. Antibiotics are also used in agriculture to clinically treat animals. Farmers also use antibiotics non-therapeutically to promote animal growth and also as a prophylactic. Evidence shows that non-therapeutic use substantially outpaces the volumes of antibiotics used to treat disease. As a result, a multitude of multi-drug resistant organisms has emerged, for which agricultural workers are showing increasing rates of colonization, and so, the policy of banning the non-therapeutic, agricultural use of antibiotics has emerged as a key policy objective, via attempts to change public law. This policy approach continues to be pushed and also continues to fail. Why? The lack of progress has largely to do with the potential economic winners and losers of such a policy implementation. This presentation summarizes the potential economic winners and losers and also shows how existing policy discussions, while of good intent, could actually hurting progress of such a policy implementation.