Antibiotic misuse Antibiotic misuse Antibiotic misuse, sometimes called antibiotic abuse or antibiotic overuse, refers to the misuse or overuse of antibiotics, with potentially serious effects on health. It is a contributing factor to the development of antibiotic resistance, including the creation of multidrug-resistant bacteria, informally called "super bugs": relatively harmless bacteria (such as staphylococcus, enterococcus and acinetobacter) can develop resistance to multiple antibiotics and cause life-threatening infections. Antibiotics have been around since 1928 when penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming. In the 1980s, antibiotics that were determined medically important for treatment of animals could be approved under veterinary oversight. In 1996, the
Antibiotic use in livestock Antibiotic use in livestock Antibiotic use in livestock is the use of antibiotics for any purpose in the husbandry of livestock, which includes treatment when ill (therapeutic), treatment of a batch of animals when at least one is diagnosed as ill (metaphylaxis, similar to the way bacterial meningitis is treated in children), and preventative treatment (prophylaxis). The use of subtherapeutic doses in animal feed and water to promote growth and improve feed efficiency is discouraged by the FDA as part of their Veterinary Feed Directive, which seeks voluntary compliance from drug manufacturers to re-label their antibiotics. This article does not