Antibiotic reduction in animal production

The challenges seem daunting and the predictions of increasing post-weaning diarrhoea in piglets, increased dairy cow mastitis or necrotic enteritis in poultry when antibiotics are no longer available in production systems makes us worried. However, these worries may be unwarranted. We hear it all the time, ‘stop using antibiotics’, ‘reduce antibiotic use’, and scary predictions that antibiotics will stop working and bring us back to the pre-antibiotic era. It sounds like our ability to