The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released their latest report on antibiotic use in animal agriculture, and the reality is cause for serious alarm. In a business-as-usual scenario, the industry’s antibiotic use is projected to rise by roughly 30% by 2040, with potentially catastrophic implications for the global crisis of antibiotic resistance. At the end of 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that, in the U.S., purchases of antibiotics for use in animals raised for meat, dairy, and eggs surged, showing a staggering 16 percent increase from 2023, even as the global industry is under pressure to reduce antibiotic use.
In 2025, Farm Forward published a report on the chilling ramifications of antibiotic misuse and overuse in animal agriculture—a ubiquitous practice used to keep animals alive in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions that make them sick. In the United States, the industrial animal sector purchases two-thirds (66 percent) of antibiotics classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as important for the treatment of human disease.
This means that the same drugs doctors rely on to fight infections in people are being fed to cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys on an industrial scale: in 2024, 41 percent of medically important drugs were purchased for use in cows, 43 percent for pigs, 10 percent for turkeys, and 2 percent for chickens, indicating wide reliance on these drugs across animal industries. The consequences here are not abstract; antibiotic use in animal agriculture directly contributes to the global crisis of antibiotic resistance with real, life-and-death consequences for humans and the future of medicine.
According to the CDC, there are already more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections in the U.S. each year and 1 in 80 people with these infections die as a result. Global projections warn that, by 2050, this number could be 10 million deaths worldwide (more than the current death rates from cancer). As one of the greatest public health challenges of our time, antibiotic resistance threatens the ability to treat even common bacterial infections.
The overuse and misuse of antibiotics in the industrial animal sector is one of the major drivers of the antibiotic resistance crisis. These drugs are also a cornerstone of keeping the industry functional and profitable. To understand why antibiotics are everywhere in animal agriculture, we have to look at how industrial farms operate. Animals are packed into high-density confinement housing, often on concrete floors with poor ventilation and limited space to move. Conditions are unsanitary, crowded, and stressful, creating a perfect breeding ground for disease. Genetic breeding practices make the problem worse. Genetically modified animals, bred for rapid growth and efficient production, tend to have fragile immune systems, making them more susceptible to disease.
The industry’s answer? Prophylactic use of antibiotics to keep animals alive in conditions where they would otherwise get sick and die. Animals routinely receive antibiotics in low, subtherapeutic doses where antibiotics are administered preemptively to prevent disease rather than treat it. Subtherapeutic use of antibiotics has been identified as a serious risk factor for antibiotic resistance and its spread to humans since the drugs are not given in high enough concentrations to kill virulent bacteria. Instead, it allows them to evolve and develop resistance genes that can be transferred between pathogens and from animals to humans.
In short, extremely important. In 2024, out of those antibiotics purchased for use in farmed animals, 57 percent were medically important. Among these are those classified by the WHO as Highly Important Antimicrobials, Critically Important Antimicrobials, and Highest Priority Critically Important Antimicrobials (used as a last line of defense in serious infections).
Tetracyclines are by far the most widely used medically important drugs in animal agriculture. These are a class of broad-spectrum antibiotics heavily used to treat human infections, such as pneumonia, skin infections, sexually transmitted infections, and urinary tract infections. The FDA reports that, in 2024, tetracyclines made up more than two-thirds (69 percent) of the medically important antibiotics purchased for use on farms and, between 2023 and 2024, purchases of tetracycline shot up by a staggering 20 percent.
Other medically important drugs saw steep increases in purchases, including a 37 percent increase in aminoglycosides (used to treat severe or resistant human infections where other drugs may not work) and an 11 percent increase in lincosamides (also used to treat serious infections).
The overall increase of medically important drug purchases in the industry may also be moving the needle in the wrong direction on the proportion of medically important antibiotics sold for use in animal agriculture versus human medicine. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publishes annual reports on outpatient prescriptions for antibiotics in humans. In 2024, prescriptions decreased slightly (by 1 percent) as the animal industrial sector’s volume soared, suggesting that the share of medically important antibiotics sold for use in farmed animals may have increased from the historic average of 66 percent.
There are two reasonable factors that could explain such a steep increase in antibiotic purchases by the industrial animal sector: 1) antibiotic sales matched an increase in the number of animals raised for food, and 2) there was a higher prevalence of bacterial disease necessitating increased antibiotic use. We didn’t see either of these trends in 2024.
Animal production numbers stayed roughly the same, showing a marginal increase of less than 1 percent—a figure that cannot account for a 16 percent increase in drug sales. Similarly, the industry did not see a spike in bacterial diseases that would necessitate increased use of antibiotics on farms.
Instead, the most likely reason for the increase is the continued (and now, it appears, escalating) irresponsible subtherapeutic use of these drugs to keep animals alive in environments that make them sick.
This indicates that, despite global calls for better antibiotic stewardship in animal agriculture and the need for a significant reduction in the use of medically important antibiotics, the industry has blatantly disregarded the risk posed by its misuse and overuse of drugs and has made no progress in meaningful reduction of antibiotic use. In reality, it’s getting worse.
The truth is that it’s cheaper and easier to preemptively medicate animals in low doses than to improve the conditions under which animals are raised or to raise more genetically resilient animals in the first place. The industrial animal sector treats antibiotics not as essential medicines as they are intended to be but instead as an indispensable management tool to prop up irresponsible and dangerous practices. Without them, industrial farming would collapse under the weight of its own health problems. But human health and the very future of medicine cannot be sacrificed to an industry’s relentless pursuit of profit.
A future where we reach the FAO’s projected increase of 30% by 2040 is not inevitable. As the FAO urges, avoiding the worst antibiotic-resistance futures requires treating the ongoing effectiveness of antibiotics as a global public good. This means enacting effective policies that: monitor and enforce responsible antibiotic use practices to ensure that animals only receive antibiotics when they truly need them and preserve the effectiveness of these critical drugs for human medicine. The true costs of anything short of major reforms in antibiotic use are simply too high.