Disease

Drug-Resistant Superbugs in Meat

Pork, chicken, and turkey meat contaminated

10%

of UK pork products sampled were infected with antibiotic-resistant superbugs.¹

50%

of Lidl chicken tested was found to contain antibiotic-resistant superbugs.²

1 million

people die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections.³

What It Is

Factory farms are filthy, squalid places. Highly stressed animals with weakened immune systems are crammed into barns and pens where disease can flourish and spread. The sane and decent response would be to make conditions better, but instead the industry doses animals with antibiotics just to try and keep as many alive until slaughter day as possible. This has a major impact on human health.

The repeated use of different antibiotics can allow bacteria to mutate, leaving the hardiest to multiply, gain in strength, and become resistant to even the most effective antibiotics we have. These bugs do not stay on farms. They spread out into the community in contaminated meat, when manure is sprayed onto fields (and gets onto our produce and into our rivers), and when farm workers, vehicles, or equipment leave the farm, taking the bugs with them. As their name suggests, they cannot be killed by antibiotics, which means infections we could once treat can now be lethal.

In 2023, there were 66,730 serious antibiotic-resistant infections in the UK and 2,200 people died.⁴