The Silent Killer
World Animal Protection India film ‘The Silent Killer: Antimicrobial Resistance or Superbugs’ underscoring reality of antibiotic misuse in factory farming.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
No future for factory farming
Roughly three-quarters of all antibiotics sold each year are marketed for use in farm animals rather than humans.
Antibiotics are used routinely to prop up low welfare practices on factory farms.
Their overuse contributes to the rapid rise and spread of bacteria resistant to medicines used to fight infections.
Forget the slogans. Forget the catchy jingles. Forget the clever advertising.
Businesses are exploiting and abusing animals on a staggering scale for the sake of profit.
People are dying. Antibiotics are becoming ineffective.
Already, more than 700,000 people die each year from superbugs where antibiotics are ineffective in treating infections.
Alarmingly, up to 10 million people are expected to die from superbugs each year by 2050. These will disproportionately affect the poorest countries in the world.
Antibiotics are used across groups to prevent the stressed animals getting sick
Thus propping up a system of suffering for food production. The health and wellbeing of animals, people and our planet are interdependent. The scale of suffering caused by factory farming is truly astounding.
- The WHO recommends that antibiotics should not be routinely used to prevent disease across groups of farm animals. Despite this, the practice remains widespread on cruel factory farms, with as much as 75% of the world’s antibiotics used on farm animals.
- Resistant bacteria called “superbugs” are carried off farms via water, air, workers, insects, wildlife, and meat, reaching humans and causing life-threatening illness.
- There is ample science showing how antibiotics overuse on factory farms leads to superbugs (AMR) that spreads to workers, the environment and into the food chain.
Yet antibiotic use in farming continues
This is despite the UN, the G20 and many world leaders recognizing superbugs as a global health emergency and calling for comprehensive actions in human medicine and agriculture to address the problem.
The health and wellbeing of animals, people and our planet are interdependent. Poor animal health and welfare in factory farming negatively affect food safety, our environment and climate. Ending factory farming will curb the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from farm animals and stop superbugs in their tracks. It will bring better animal health and welfare, healthier diets for people and a climate-safe and sustainable food system.
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