Antimicrobial use in wean to market pigs in the United States accessed via voluntary sharing

Reprinted as posted on Swine in Minnesota blog. Adopted March 26, 2021 Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project Friday rubric.

Summary of a publication by Drs. Peter Davies and Randal Singer from the University of Minnesota on the use of antimicrobials in wean-to-market pigs in the United States.

Key Points

• Obtained data on antimicrobial use in the U.S swine industry through voluntary and confidential sharing of proprietary data
• First substantial description of antimicrobial use in U.S swine beyond FDA sales and distribution data
• Critically important classes were only 5% of use, and fluoroquinolones and ceftiofur (drugs of most concern) were <1%
• The project is ongoing and seeking further participation from interested systems for 2018 & 2020

Antimicrobial resistance is now a crisis in human medicine. This has rightly brought scrutiny of how antimicrobials are used across all prescribing professions, along with efforts to define ‘best practices’ for antimicrobial use. It is generally accepted that negative consequences of antimicrobial use in animals may relate to both animal health and human health due to transmission of resistant organisms from animals to people. However, the extent of the impact of antimicrobial use in animals on human health remains unresolved.

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