The use of antibiotics in animal agriculture is an important factor in providing the safe, affordable food we need and want. At the same time, antibiotic resistance is a complex and serious issue. That’s why farmers, veterinarians and regulators, principally the Food and Drug Administration, collaborated to address antibiotic resistance, changing the way animal agriculture operates today.
Eating meat that contains antibiotics? Despite the number of questions on this topic asked on Google, it’s not a problem. That’s because safeguards, which start on the farm and extend into the processing plant, are in place to ensure meat doesn’t contain unsafe drug residues, including from antibiotics.
Some antibiotics are approved for use in animals, others in people, and still others in both animals and people (also called shared class antibiotics), but the majority of antibiotics used in animals are non-critical to human medicine.