Livestock Welfare and Antibiotic Stewardship: An Integrated Approach

Improving livestock welfare reduces disease incidence and antibiotic use simultaneously, demonstrating that animal health, welfare and antibiotic stewardship are complementary rather than competing goals.

Key Facts

Health conditions driving antibiotic use in livestock — respiratory disease, mastitis, digital dermatitis — all have welfare components
Improving housing conditions, nutrition and management reduces disease incidence and antibiotic need together
Norwegian salmon farming reduced antibiotic use by 99% through vaccination and welfare improvements
UK pig industry antibiotic use has declined significantly through a combination of stewardship and management improvement
Veterinary prescribing practices and farm management practices both influence antibiotic use patterns
AMR stewardship goals and animal welfare goals are structurally aligned — disease prevention serves both

Welfare Considerations

Antibiotic stewardship and animal welfare share a fundamental alignment: both are best served by preventing disease rather than treating it. Poor housing that causes respiratory disease requires antibiotics to treat and compromises welfare simultaneously. Improved housing prevents both the disease and the need for treatment. This alignment makes welfare improvement programmes powerful antibiotic stewardship tools, and antibiotic stewardship programmes effective welfare advocates. Communicating this alignment to farmers, vets and policymakers creates stronger coalitions for both goals than pursuing them separately.

What You Can Do

Support integrated approaches that improve both welfare and antibiotic stewardship simultaneously
Choose food from producers demonstrating low antibiotic use through improved management
Advocate for integrated welfare-stewardship programmes rather than treating these as separate regulatory concerns
Support research demonstrating the co-benefits of welfare improvement for antibiotic reduction
Engage with veterinary and farming bodies on the complementarity of welfare and stewardship goals