Around 100,000 tonnes of antibiotics a year
Farmers give a staggering amount of antibiotics to their animals. Researchers estimate that around 99,500 tonnes of antibiotics and similar drugs were used on cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs in 2020, and that the total is on course to reach 107,500 tonnes by 20301. This year it is likely to be around 104,000 tonnes, or about 3 kilograms every second.
That is an estimate, not a measurement. Many countries report little or nothing about how antibiotics are used on their farms, so the researchers had to fill the gaps with a model, and their uncertainty is large: the true figure for 2020 could be anywhere from about 69,000 to 198,000 tonnes1.
Why farm animals get antibiotics
Some of it is ordinary medicine. Animals get sick, and a vet treats them. But on many farms, antibiotics are given to healthy animals as a matter of routine.
The first reason is prevention. When thousands of chickens or pigs live packed together, an infection can spread through a whole shed in days, and a daily dose of antibiotics in the feed or water keeps that risk down. The second reason is growth. Small, steady doses of antibiotics make animals put on weight faster, which is why antibiotics have been used as growth promoters in animal feed for decades.
The European Union banned antibiotics as growth promoters in 20064. Since 2022 it has also banned routine use on farm animals, and it no longer allows antibiotics to make up for poor hygiene or bad living conditions5. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that every country do the same, and stop using medically important antibiotics both to make animals grow and to prevent disease in healthy animals6. Many countries have not.
How farm antibiotics breed resistant bacteria
Every time bacteria meet an antibiotic, the ones that happen to survive it are the ones that multiply. Use antibiotics often enough and the survivors take over, and the drug stops working. This is antimicrobial resistance: bacteria, and other microbes, that have evolved to shrug off the medicines meant to kill them.
Farms are an ideal place for this to happen, because the drugs are used constantly and on huge numbers of animals. Resistant bacteria bred on farms can reach people through meat, through water and soil, and through the people who work with the animals6. Many of the antibiotics used on farms belong to the same families as those used in human medicine, which is why the WHO wants the most important ones kept out of farming.
The human cost is already large. In 2021, bacterial infections that no longer responded to antibiotics directly caused 1.14 million deaths, and were involved in 4.71 million, according to a study published in The Lancet7.
That's how many people died in 2021 as a direct result of bacterial infections that antibiotics could no longer treat
The same study forecasts that direct deaths could rise to 1.91 million a year by 2050, adding up to more than 39 million deaths between 2025 and 20507. Farm antibiotics are only one of the causes, alongside overuse in human medicine, but they are among the easiest to cut. The World Bank has warned that by 2050, drug-resistant infections could shrink the world economy by 1.1% to 3.8% a year, losses on the scale of the 2008 financial crisis8.
Where antibiotic use is highest
Most of the world’s farm antibiotics are used where most of the world’s farm animals now live. The researchers found that 67% of the hotspots of use are in Asia1, where meat production has grown fastest.
Chickens and pigs, raised in the largest numbers and the most crowded conditions, are central to the story. Every one of the tens of billions of birds slaughtered each year is a potential patient in a system where disease spreads easily.
The birds behind a large share of the world’s farm antibiotics.
Chickens slaughtered for meat
Globally, this year
Europe cut its farm antibiotics in half
Europe shows the trend can be reversed. Across 25 European countries that reported every year, sales of antibiotics for farm animals fell by 53% between 2011 and 2022, to the lowest level ever recorded. Sales of some of the drugs most important for human medicine fell even faster: polymyxins, a last-resort class, by 81%3.
Globally, there are signs of progress too. The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) reports that antibiotic use per kilogram of farm animal fell by 5% between 2020 and 2022, in countries that together hold 71% of the world’s livestock by weight2.
Where farm antibiotic use is heading
Those two trends pull in opposite directions. Each animal is getting fewer antibiotics, especially in Europe, but the number of animals keeps growing, which is why the estimated global total is still expected to rise by about 8% to 20301.
Which force wins will probably be decided in Asia, Latin America and Africa, where most of the growth in meat production is happening. If the fast-growing meat industries there follow Europe’s path, global use could start to fall within a decade. If they rely on routine antibiotics to keep crowded farms running, the world will keep breeding resistant bacteria faster than it can develop new drugs. That is a guess, not a forecast, but the European numbers show the choice is real: farming with half the antibiotics has been done.
The meat the world produces this year, and the reason the number of animals keeps rising.
More on the animals behind these numbers is on the page for every land animal slaughtered for meat. The rest of what the world raises and eats is in the food section.
