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What we consume can alternatively nourish us or cause sickness. Recently, I wrote about how dietary habits influences the risk of colon cancer. However, what of agricultural practices?

Worldwide, we are witnessing the rise of cheap meat, largely driven by consumer desire from a expanding affluent population that finally has the means to purchase beef, pork and chicken, which were once out of reach. Approximately 45% of increased worldwide demand is occurring in nations with rising economies such as India, China, Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia. Poultry is set to take an greater portion of that growth, projected to increase by 21% by 2034, because it is more affordable, widely acceptable and needs fewer resources per kilogram than red meat. In the next decade, it is projected that chicken will provide 45% of the dietary protein consumed from all meat sources.

But this has consequences. With limited land and intense time pressure, the approach in numerous nations has been to use antibiotics at scale. This isn’t just to address disease but additionally as a prophylactic to prevent disease in crowded conditions. Furthermore, administering antimicrobials makes farm animals to gain weight more rapidly, although scientists aren’t sure the precise reason. All of this means that, unlike their use for humans—where antimicrobials are almost always prescribed to combat infection—their use in farming is far more common and indiscriminate. Research monitoring their consumption suggest that 73% of all antibiotics distributed worldwide are used in livestock production.

This enormous overuse is causing a increase in antibiotic-resistant pathogens. For example, colistin resistance, a “last-resort antibiotic”, initially emerged in E coli bacteria that subsequently contaminated swine. E coli was afterwards found in pig farmers. All it takes are air travel and global travel networks for these pathogens to circulate worldwide. Currently, colistin-resistant bacteria have been discovered not only in medical facilities in the Far East but around the globe.

What does this mean for an individual waiting in a doctor’s office or a medical center in the UK? It means that infections that were previously easily treatable—such as otitis, UTIs or surgical site infections—become untreatable even after a course of antimicrobials. It implies that surgeries such as C-sections, hip replacements and cancer therapies that rely on immunosuppression all become riskier. And while novel antimicrobials are feasible to create, the development process is lengthy and expensive. We must preserve the arsenal we have.

The remedies to this problem can only come from changing worldwide agriculture. Admittedly, the United Kingdom has made significant progress in reducing antibiotics in farming. Sales of veterinary antimicrobials destined for consumption has dropped by 59% over the past decade. The application of this last-resort drug is now effectively zero. The employment of critically important antibiotics has dropped to under 0.5% of all animal antibiotic sales. And, research by several EU bodies suggested that after antibiotic use in farming was cut by nearly half between 2014 and 2021, antimicrobial resistance in E coli throughout Europe also started dropping.

However just concentrating on the UK or EU is a drop in the bucket. If the major emerging economies are part of the conversation on how meat is produced, we continue to be just as vulnerable to antibiotic resistance. The difficulty is that moving towards alternative farming methods requires additional land and time: increasing the cost of animal protein in highly populated nations can rapidly cause public protests, governmental opposition and frustration. The health imperative is evident, but this needs to be balanced with concerns over food security, economics and public demand.

Environmental researchers have long warned about the ecological impacts of the present worldwide agricultural model, whether it’s greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, or deforestation. But these effects often seem distant and abstract, particularly for individuals struggling with cost-of-living pressures or concerned with immediate healthcare access.

Antibiotic resistance is tangible. Almost everyone has taken antibiotics at one time or another, and we can envision what would occur if their curative power was abruptly lost. Agriculture, health and the environment are all interlinked. How pork is farmed in Asia affects whether your child’s antibiotics are effective in Scotland. Whether a woman in Lagos survives a C-section is tied to how poultry are farmed in Brazil.

Unless we confront these widespread, global issues, such as how our diet is sourced and how we utilize our current medications, we risk losing something invaluable: the capacity to cure bacterial diseases that we assume will always work today.