Efforts to cut antibiotics in factory farming miss target
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Farmers had pledged to cut the use of antibiotics by this percentage between 2009 and 2015, but in some cases usage has actually gone up, the animal medicine foundation SDA said in a new report.
Over the five years, the amount of antibiotic used on factory farms has gone down by 58%, but last year the drop was jut 0.65%. And turkey and calf farmers are now using more antibiotics, the SDA said.
The organisation said it plans to carry out extra research into a number of ‘notorious’ farms which use far more antibiotics than average. ■