Pharming animals: a global history of antibiotics in food production (1935–2017)

Summary

This historical analysis traces the adoption of antibiotics across global food production systems from the 1930s onwards, documenting how initial enthusiasm for their productivity benefits gave way from the mid-1950s to growing concerns about antimicrobial resistance and drug residues. The paper emphasises that regulatory responses were neither uniform nor timely, creating an international patchwork of divergent approaches. The author argues that understanding this history of regulatory failures is essential for developing effective international antibiotic stewardship, requiring simultaneous attention to economic incentives, development ideologies, and culturally-specific risk frameworks that perpetuate high antibiotic consumption.

Regional applicability

The paper's global scope encompasses regulatory histories that include the United Kingdom and European context, providing historical perspective relevant to UK policy discussions on antimicrobial resistance in agriculture. However, as a historical narrative rather than empirical study, it does not provide data on UK-specific agricultural conditions or contemporary practice; its primary value is in contextualising regulatory choices and their long-term consequences for antimicrobial resistance governance.

Key measures

Historical documentation of antibiotic adoption timelines, regulatory divergence across countries, and stated drivers of agricultural antibiotic use (disease treatment, feed conversion, food preservation).

Outcomes reported

The paper reconstructs the origins, global proliferation, and international regulation of agricultural antibiotics from 1935–2017, documenting how regulatory approaches to antimicrobial resistance varied internationally. It identifies how economic dependencies, developmental narratives, and fragmented risk perceptions have shaped global antibiotic consumption and antimicrobial resistance.

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