Overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture drives antimicrobial resistance, harms individual animals through suppressed symptoms, and connects farm animal welfare to human health.
Antibiotic stewardship in animal agriculture is at the intersection of animal welfare, public health, and industrial farming practices. From a welfare perspective, the routine use of antibiotics to manage diseases caused by poor welfare conditions is ethically problematic: it allows production systems that cause suffering to continue by suppressing the health consequences of those conditions rather than addressing their root causes. Improving animal welfare — through better housing, lower stocking densities, improved biosecurity, and stress reduction — reduces disease incidence and antibiotic demand simultaneously. The welfare and AMR arguments are thus aligned: the path to lower antibiotic use runs through improved animal welfare. Consumers, retailers, and regulators can drive this improvement by requiring both welfare standards and antibiotic stewardship as linked components of responsible sourcing.