Use of antibiotics in the U.S. Meat Industry Skyrocketed Last Year
This puts the Health of People and Animals at Risk from Dangerous Superbugs
By Steve Roach, Safe and Healthy Food Program Director
The FDA recently released data on the sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals in 2024. There was a 16% increase in sales from 2023 to 2024. This is the largest single year increase in sales of medically important antibiotics, those antibiotics the FDA considers a risk for creating an antibiotic resistance problem, since the FDA began requiring drug makers to report sales data in 2009. 16% is much higher than the second largest year-to-year increase of 8% which occurred in 2019. The overuse of antibiotics, whether in agriculture or human medicine, leads to the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs – pathogens that are difficult to treat. More than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the United States each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result. Workers in the livestock and meat industries, along with children, the elderly, and people with chronic illness, are more at risk from superbug infections.
Findings of the report:
16% year-over-year increase in sales of medically important antibiotics for use in food-producing animals and a 28% increase since 2017, when the FDA’s last major attempt to address antibiotic overuse in agriculture was implemented.
79% increase in sales for chicken, 25% increase in sales for turkeys, 16% for cattle, and 13% in pigs compared to 2023 sales.
While the year-to-year increase for cattle and pigs was lower than for poultry, it is still incredibly large, and most medically important antibiotics sold for use in food animals go to cattle and pigs – approximately 41% go to cattle, and 43% go to swine.
These increases are not the result of increases in the number of animals raised. There were fewer cattle and turkey raised in 2024 compared to 2023, and the number of pigs and chickens increased by less than 1%.
It’s easier to give antibiotics than it is to provide healthy conditions in the huge facilities where most food animals are raised. We suspect that the large rise was a result of companies backtracking on commitments to reduce antibiotic use, primarily due to a weakening of public pressure and government oversight. In 2024, companies backtracked on prior commitments to reduce antibiotics in meat production. One large turkey company gave up on a commitment to work on reducing antibiotic use by 10% each year. The poultry industry has claimed that the increase in use is linked to disease pressure from secondary infections linked to a viral disease, but it is hard to justify an almost doubling of use from year to year. In addition, the poultry industry admits that this massive use of antibiotics had “limited efficacy.” So even if disease was the reason, the huge increase in antibiotic use provided little to no animal health benefits.
Still, even with an almost 80% increase in sales within the chicken industry between 2023 and 2024, chicken still only accounts for less than 4% of total sales of antibiotics in food-producing animals, thus contributing a small part to the overall 16% increase in sales. The chicken industry has drastically reduced its use over time, however, if there are more years like this one, that progress could easily be eliminated. Pigs and cattle continue to be the biggest users of antibiotics and have been consistently moving in the wrong direction. 25% more antibiotics were sold for use in cattle and 50% more in pigs in 2024 compared to 2017.
FACT and the other members of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition call on the meat industry to stop feeding antibiotics to food animals in the absence of diagnosed illness and to support setting sector-wide antibiotic reduction targets. In addition, the FDA should prohibit the administration of antibiotics for longer than 21 days and collect data on antibiotic use from feed mills- providing more accurate data on actual use, rather than relying on sales data as a proxy for on-farm data.