Dairy farmers go to great lengths to protect the health of their cattle and the quality of the milk they produce. Which is why it’s discouraging to think that the most widely used tactic in the industry for fighting bacteria and infections in cows is giving rise to a potent (and growing) threat to livestock and to humans as well.
The Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that infections from drug-resistant “nightmare bacteria” have jumped nearly 70% in the U.S. since 2019. These bacteria resist nearly all available antibiotics, making common infections harder and sometimes impossible to treat.
Although much of the focus of the topic has been on hospital settings, the agriculture industry is a significant and often-overlooked driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Every year, roughly 70% of all antibiotics produced globally are used in livestock farming. And because the nature of bacteria is to adapt and proliferate, agriculture’s approach to antibiotics has, over time, created conditions that actually increase the risks of worse and more widespread infections for both animals and humans.
Why reducing antibiotic use in livestock is critical to curbing AMR
As the global population continues to grow and underdeveloped regions begin to expand their agricultural footprint and meat consumption, the use of antibiotics has increased accordingly. Barring significant changes in the agriculture industry, global antibiotic use could reach an estimated 143,481 tons by 2040, a 29.5% increase from the 2019 baseline, according to a recent study from scientists at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
As a result of rising demands in growing economies, agricultural antibiotics use has seen an increase – not only compromising the overall health of livestock populations but also creating additional industry problems such as product waste.
But the associated human aspects are even more pressing. Antibiotics overuse creates resistant bacteria in livestock that don’t stay confined to farms but can spread into local communities through wastewater, environmental pollution or direct contact with an affected animal. Those microbes put worldwide human populations at risk for superbugs that could become unmanageable by any treatment.
The importance of rethinking agriculture’s reliance on antibiotics
Misuse and overuse of antibiotics to treat and manage diseases such as bovine mastitis, the leading cause for antibiotic use within the dairy farming industry, are inarguably contributing to the global growth of antimicrobial resistance. But we should be clear about the likely fallout of AMR if no action is taken.
According to the CDC, “Antimicrobial-resistant infections that require the use of second- and third-line treatments can harm patients by causing serious side effects, such as organ failure, and prolong care and recovery, sometimes for months.” In one study in the general medicine journal The Lancet, it was estimated that 1.27 million deaths were directly attributable to AMR in 2019. Those numbers were a reflection only of bacterial infections (not viruses or fungi, for example), and some experts feared COVID may have worsened the problem in the intervening years. Even more concerning, a later study published by The Lancet in 2024 estimated that by 2050, there are going to be 8.22 million deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance.
Those and similar findings should be enough to prompt a mass reevaluation of antibiotics use in general. But additional considerations related to any future that doesn’t prioritize a significant decrease in, if not a discontinuation of, antibiotics use in agriculture include environmental and food safety risks for humans and production losses in agriculture, leading to economic, sustainability and other public health challenges.
Breakthrough treatments and alternatives: A way forward
The agriculture industry is neither unaware nor helpless in the face of the AMR problem. But given the infrastructure established around the administration of antibiotics and the concern of alarming the public, the industry has been slow to change.
Increasingly, however, consumers are seeking out alternatives to antibiotic- treated livestock, due to individual health awareness. They are gradually beginning to understand the global health threat of continued (and especially increased) antibiotics use at scale in agricultural settings. In recent years, the global community committed to restrain AMR has increasingly recognized the “One Health” approach, a collaborative approach recognizing the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health. Although some stakeholders within the agricultural industry are committed to the “One Health” approach, generally the industry isn’t likely to make a break from antibiotics until that push from the public reaches a tipping point. The time will come when it will be compelled, if not forced by government regulation, to embrace alternatives. But what might those be?
Agriculture is already making use of vaccines to treat livestock as a supplement or alternative to antibiotics. But vaccines, due to the nature of bovine anatomy, don’t work effectively in treating mastitis and are recognized not to be a standalone solution. Other treatments are in development but remain in the early stages or come with prohibitive complications. An antibiotics alternative that shows great and immediate promise, however, is immune-based biologics. Products such as milk-derived proteins have already proven to reduce the usage of antibiotics in commercial farms, offering a safe and residue-free therapy without the drawbacks and side effects of antibiotics.
Immune-based biologics make use of naturally occurring peptides to strengthen the immune systems of cattle, effectively managing mastitis while also increasing milk yields, improving milk quality and even reducing the animals’ greenhouse gas emissions. Their administration requires no overhaul of infrastructure on a macro or micro scale. Farmers can use the same equipment to treat their stock with biologics that they use to administer antibiotics. Milk and meat from biologics-treated livestock is safe for human consumption, and any waste involved removes the harm to the environment associated with antibiotics, including the rising risks of AMR.
Dairy farmers, let alone the global agricultural industry, can’t be expected to change overnight. But the threat of nightmare bacteria and super bugs isn’t new, and the public is already at agriculture’s doorstep looking for alternatives to a system that is known to be unsustainable. Immune-based biologics are a solution with the potential to reduce (and perhaps eliminate) antibiotics use across dairy farms worldwide and ultimately mitigate the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
References omitted but are available upon request by sending an email to the editor.
