The use of antibiotics in livestock production has significant implications for both animal welfare and antimicrobial resistance in humans. Responsible stewardship serves both goals.
Antibiotic stewardship in livestock is a welfare issue in two dimensions. First, animals in systems so poor that routine preventive antibiotics are necessary to maintain productivity are in welfare-compromised environments — antibiotic use is masking rather than solving a welfare problem. Second, the AMR crisis driven partly by agricultural antibiotic use threatens human health at a population level, undermining the efficacy of antibiotics that treat animal infections when animals genuinely need them. The welfare-positive approach aligns with the stewardship imperative: improve housing, reduce stocking density, improve biosecurity and nutrition, and reduce antibiotic dependency as a consequence of genuine welfare improvement rather than treating disease suppression as a substitute for addressing its causes.