09.12.2023

Recent data published by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reveals a 4% increase in the sales of antibiotics deemed medically important for the treatment of food-producing animals in 2022. The report indicates a total distribution of 6.2 million kilograms (kg) of these antibiotics for use in livestock, including chickens, turkeys, cattle, swine, and others, compared to 5.9 million kg in the previous year. Medically important antibiotics, which are closely monitored due to their usage in human medicine, constituted 56% of the total antibiotics sold for application in food-producing animals.
The FDA highlights a noteworthy trend, noting a 36% reduction in the volume of antibiotics sold for livestock and poultry in the United States since 2015, the peak year of animal antibiotic sales.However, the decline in sales occurred primarily in 2016 and 2017, coinciding with the implementation of new FDA regulations that prohibited the use of medically important antibiotics for growth promotion.
Swine maintained the highest percentage of sales for medically important antibiotics at 43%, followed by cattle at 41%, turkey at 12%, chicken at 2%, and other food animals at 2%. Although there was a decrease in the sale of medically important antibiotics for chickens in 2022, there was an increase for cattle (4.4%), swine (5%), and turkey (10%).The new report's biomass-adjusted sales chart indicates that, with the exception of fluoroquinolones, all antibiotic classes experienced a rise in biomass-adjusted sales from 2021 to 2022, with the majority showing double-digit increases.