Keeping Antibiotics Effective
Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance in U.S. Agriculture
From Impact
Antimicrobials are medicines that are designed to kill a variety of organisms, most notably disease-causing bacteria. They include antibiotics and other anti-bacterial substances. Unfortunately, bacteria may develop resistance to antimicrobials, and this poses a major threat to human health in the 21st Century: the discovery of new antimicrobials has slowed down, but resistance to existing ones is continuing to increase. If antimicrobials lose their effectiveness, millions of people will die from illnesses that can currently be treated.
Any use of antimicrobials can stimulate resistance if the context enables resistant bacteria to multiply at the expense of non-resistant ones. The over-prescription and misuse of antimicrobials increases the likelihood of resistance spreading, so this needs to be tackled by public health systems. Unfortunately, this is not just a problem for human health: antimicrobials are also prescribed to food animals (like cows, pigs, sheep and chickens), and some antimicrobial resistant bacteria can move between animals and people.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in agriculture therefore poses a double risk to humans: reduction in the effectiveness of antimicrobials and disruption to food security. The over-prescription and misuse of antimicrobials increases the likelihood of resistance spreading, so this needs to be tackled by public health systems.