The quiet cost of in-feed antibiotics

Every veterinarian I trained with was taught to reach for an antibiotic first. Productivity moved up. Mortality moved down. Nobody asked what happened to the residue, the resistant bacteria, or the human downstream.

Today we have the answer. Resistant infections kill 4.71 million people a year already. The projection for 2050 is two million annually directly attributable to AMR — more than cancer, on the modelled trajectory. Half of all antibiotics produced on Earth are still going into animal feed.

The European Union banned antibiotic growth promoters in 2006. China followed in 2020. India is tightening every year. The producers who treated this as a compliance problem rather than an opportunity are now scrambling.

Truevet was founded on the opposite bet. If the science is real, the regulation will catch up. Build phytogenic alternatives that actually outperform the molecules they replace, validate them in the same trials, and the market will arrive at your door. Eight countries and ten years later, that bet is starting to pay.

The work isn't done. Most of the industry still treats phytogenics as folklore. We're trying to change that — one published trial at a time.