TUCKER, GA. – In its latest report regarding antibiotic stewardship within the US poultry industry, the US Poultry & Egg Association (USPOULTRY) examined how it continues its balance between human health and maintaining the health of poultry flocks around the country.

“USPOULTRY’s board of directors has supported this research for many years, which emphasizes the continued focus on the judicious use of antibiotics in the poultry industry,” said Nath Morris, president of the US Poultry & Egg Association. “We are thankful for the long-term involvement of so many of our members and other poultry organizations in this study.”

Leading the project was Randall Singer, DVM, PhD, from Mindwalk Consulting Group LLC and the University of Minnesota. Details from the report showed an 11-year set of data collected from 2013 to 2023 for US broiler chickens and turkeys along with eight years of data from 2016 to 2023 on layers.

Updates from this report are added to research provided in December 2023 that covered 2013-2022.

One key finding among broiler chickens is the number of chickens receiving antibiotics over the 2013-2023 period decreased from 90% to less than 1%. Medically important in-feed antibiotic use in broilers also dropped considerably with no in-feed tetracycline use since 2019 and virginiamycin use decreased about 99% in the 11 year-period researched.

The USPOULTRY report also announced large decreases in the use of penicillin, lincomycin, tetracycline and sulfonamide for chicken.

Turkeys receiving antibiotics in the hatchery decreased from 97% in 2013 to around 40% in 2023. Hatchery gentamicin dropped 38% during the 11-year period. In-feed antibiotics use that was deemed medically important for turkey with in-feed tetracycline dropped more than 58% from 2013 to 2023.

Other antibiotics listed by USPOULTRY that showed a decrease include penicillin, lincomycin, neomycin and tetracycline.

With the final group, the report looked at layer chicken antibiotic use from 2016 and 2023 and found that the hens typically begin laying eggs around 20 weeks of age and end when the layer hen is around 80 to 100 weeks old.

“The primary medically important antibiotic used in layer hens for treatment and control of disease in this dataset was chlortetracycline (CTC), used in part because it has a zero-day withdrawal, meaning that there is no loss of eggs during the treatment period,” the report noted.

Details showed that CTC was only administered via feed in pullets during day 2 through 16 to 18 weeks of age and layer hens.

The project added that the majority of CTC was used in the layer hens for treatment of disease and no pullets in the dataset were given CTC in the feed during 2022 or 2023. According to USPOULTRY, less than 0.1% of total-hen days were exposed to CTC.

USPOULTRY plans to support Singer in the annual data collection for all three sectors of the industry. The project remains funded through multiple grants from the association and a cooperative agreement with the US Food and Drug Administration. Starting in September 2024, a new cooperative agreement between FDA-CVM and Singer was initiated, thus continuing the public-private partnership for this effort.