With World AMR Awareness Week less than two months away, I thought it might be worth looking at some of the initiatives that our industry is implementing, and there are numerous to the industry's credit, to cut antibiotic use to slow or prevent the emergence of resistance.
It is undeniable that different countries and different sectors are at different stages with their efforts to cut usage. Looking at industry initiatives, in Brazil, for example, which is second only to China in veterinary antibiotics use, its pig and poultry producers’ association launched a very welcome prudent use campaign in late 2025.
The Brazilian government may have been active in addressing resistance for close to three decades, issues with surveillance recently hit some of the country’s animal protein exports to Europe, including those of poultry. Local poultry producers noted that they were already fully compliant with European Union rules on use of microbials. While now resolved for the poultry sector, what was lacking, it seems, was official evidence to prove this, highlighting the need to not only do something but to show that it is being done.
In other countries cutting antibiotic use is much more established, both at governmental and sector level, and has gone much further.
The U.K., for example, which the European Medicines Agency has described as having the lowest antibiotic use amongst European countries with a significant livestock farming industry, has seen its livestock sectors active in the field for much longer, and recently the British Poultry Council (BPC) published its annual report on how its members have been reducing use.
Sharp falls in usage in UK poultry
The BPC organizes a voluntary program called Antibiotic Stewardship, with about 85% of the U.K.’s poultry production falling under the program.
Latest data shows that its members’ usage has fallen to the lowest level since the program was started in 2012. Last year, total usage dropped to 11.5 metric tons (MT), down from 13.70 MT in 2024.
While the trend in use has been strongly downwards since the program was launched, there have been years where usage rose, particularly during periods of strong disease pressure. However, the BPC notes that when measured against the original 2012 baseline of 81.67 MT, the most recent figure represents a reduction of 86.4% in total use.
The report goes on to note that progress has been even more pronounced regarding highest priority critically important antibiotics – those most vital to human medicine – with a 96.8% reduction recorded over the same period. Polymixins, a class of last resort antibiotics, have been absent from U.K. poultry meat for nine consecutive years. There has been no prophylactic use of antibiotics since a voluntary agreement was entered into in 2016.
Mohammed Maliki, Chair of the BPC Antibiotics Stewardship commented that the report reflected a decade of sector-wide collaboration and reporting and a shared focus on responsible antibiotic use, along with the sharing of data pre-competitively so that members could learn from each other.
