Antibiotic use in livestock affects both animal welfare and the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. Responsible use protects current antibiotics while ensuring sick animals receive necessary treatment.
Antibiotic stewardship in livestock sits at the intersection of animal welfare and public health. Antibiotics are essential for treating bacterial disease in farm animals and denial of necessary treatment to ill animals is a welfare failure. However, preventive and growth-promotion use of antibiotics in healthy animals drives resistance development that threatens human and animal medicine globally. The welfare-positive approach involves reducing disease incidence through improved husbandry and prevention, treating sick animals promptly with appropriate antibiotics, and avoiding preventive use in healthy animals. This approach simultaneously improves animal welfare and protects the antibiotics that sick animals may need in future.