A global crisis in antibiotic resistance threatens human health. We face the specter of rising numbers of bacterial infections untreatable with antibiotics. The overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture contributes to the problem. Of the global crisis, the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine recently concluded, "Clearly, a decrease in antimicrobial use in human medicine alone will have little effect on the current situation. Substantial efforts must be made to decrease inappropriate overuse in animals and agriculture as well."

Antibiotic Resistance Project
Keep Antibiotics Working

Antibiotic Resistance Project
Antibiotics are routinely fed to livestock and poultry that are not sick to promote growth or to compensate for stressful, crowded and often less-than-sanitary conditions. An estimated 25-75 percent of feed antibiotics pass through the animal unchanged into manure.

Our Antibiotic Resistance Project highlights that antibiotic overuse in food animals worsens antibiotic resistance and can contribute to food (as well as rural environments) contaminated with drug-resistant, disease-causing bacteria. Our own testing of brand name poultry products found they routinely carry at least one kind of disease causing bacteria. These pathogens often are resistant to one or more antibiotics. Meat raised without antibiotics, such as certified organic meats, tend to carry fewer drug-resistant bacteria.

Through our online Eat Well Guide, we help consumers find farmers, markets and restaurants providing meat and fish raised without routine antibiotics. We also strive to inform food producers about alternatives to routine antibiotic use. And we tell health professionals about the problem, through Grand Rounds presentations and medical journal articles.

Keep Antibiotics Working
IATP is one of four founding members of Keep Antibiotics Working: the Campaign to End Antibiotic Overuse (KAW), a national coalition of health, consumer, agricultural and environmental groups representing more than 9 million members. The coalition works to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics by reducing unnecessary and routine uses in agriculture.