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Long-term economic case for tackling antimicrobial resistance in livestock: FAO
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Friday, 05 June, 2026, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Rome, Italy
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Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant long-term threat to food security, livestock production, economic welfare and human health, making it imperative to realign incentives in the global livestock sector before the costs of inaction become much harder to reverse, according to a new scenario-based economic assessment from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Under current trends, driven by growing demand for animal source foods and continued production intensification, global antimicrobial use in livestock is projected to increase by nearly 30 percent by 2040 compared with 2019, according to The future of antimicrobial use in livestock – The economic cost of action or inaction, presented on the sidelines of the Fourth Session of the COAG Sub-Committee on Livestock at FAO headquarters in Rome.
The report highlights that while antimicrobial growth promoters (AGPs) are associated with clear short-term productivity gains, especially in resource-limited areas, the long-term production losses projected under rising AMR scenarios are much larger. In the scenarios assessed, cumulative livestock production losses under the high-AMR case could reach about $318 billion by 2040, compared with about $53 billion under the most severe AGP phase-out case.
“The costs of reducing unnecessary antimicrobial use are often immediate and concentrated, while the benefits of preserving antimicrobial effectiveness are long-term and widely shared. This is why antimicrobial effectiveness should be treated as a global public good, requiring better alignment between national and farm-level incentives and the global benefits of preserving its effectiveness, supported by investment that makes prevention feasible at scale,” said Thanawat Tiensin, FAO assistant director-general, director of the Animal Production and Health Division, and chief veterinarian.
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