The Case for Ending Unnecessary Antibiotic Use in Livestock

Chronic diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and certain cancers, get a lot of attention from policymakers for obvious reasons. Collectively, these diseases affect more than 75 percent of American adults and drive approximately 90 percent of the nation’s healthcare costs.

But what about infectious diseases like Lyme disease, West Nile virus, pneumonia, tuberculosis, influenza, COVID, meningitis, measles, and foodborne infections like Salmonella and Escherichia coli (E. coli)? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), millions of infectious disease cases occur in the U.S. annually, causing over 23 million physician visits, tens of millions of ER visits, and many deaths, such as 45,000 flu-related deaths, 41,627 deaths from pneumonia, and 5,000 from foodborne illnesses in 2024 alone.

However, these statistics underestimate the hazard. It is the consensus of the public health community that the U.S. is losing ground in the fight against preventable infectious diseases. Not only have declining vaccination rates allowed previously controlled diseases like measles to return, but more than 30 new human pathogens have been identified over the past three decades, indicating that the number of bacterial threats is increasing.

Yet, what is most concerning to public health officials and the medical community is the surge of drug-resistant infections caused by pathogens that have become resistant to antimicrobial drugs, such as antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungals. Putting this serious problem into context, the CDC estimates that more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year, resulting in more than 35,000 deaths. Beyond this human toll, the CDC estimated that the cost of treating infections caused by just six antimicrobial-resistant germs is more than $4.6 billion annually.

Addressing this problem will require collective action, starting with a step we can take now. Public health and medical organizations broadly agree that adding antibiotics to animal feed and water to prevent illness in healthy animals living in crowded conditions contributes significantly to the rise and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This is now the case in many livestock operations where the unnecessary use of low-dose antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria that multiply rapidly and make their way to humans during the slaughter and processing of meat products and when residues in animal manure leach into the soil and contaminate water sources used for crop irrigation.

Because the health of the public is at stake, the National Consumers League is one of the 65 organizations that filed a rulemaking petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), calling on the agency to combat what scientific journals call the “silent pandemic” of antimicrobial resistance in the U.S., where AMR often progresses invisibly and goes unnoticed.

Specifically, the petition validates the medical need for antibiotics when animals are sick but urges the FDA to take several actions to ensure the safe use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, as required by Congress. Of key importance, the petition requests that the FDA:

• Publish a determination that the current routine use of antibiotics in animal feed and water when not associated with diagnosed illness does not meet the mandated standard of presenting a “reasonable certainty of no harm.”
• Withdraw approval of antibiotics administered in feed or water when not associated with a diagnosed illness. This would cover “disease prevention” and non-medical purposes of “maintenance of growth.”
• Follow the model set by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to control antibiotic use in human medicine by setting public-health-based reduction targets for antibiotic use by the livestock sector. The goal would be greater transparency and measurable improvements in antibiotic stewardship in animal agriculture.

Few actions are more important to the nation’s health than confronting the silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance. That is why we must speak out now and urge the FDA to act. If left unchecked, resistant bacterial and fungal pathogens will make common infections harder to treat, raise the risk of complications from routine medical procedures, and cost more lives. The FDA should move quickly to curb unnecessary antibiotic use in livestock and protect the effectiveness of these lifesaving drugs for the people who need them most.