FAO

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a report on 3 June 2026 projecting global antimicrobial use in livestock rising 30% by 2040 against a 2019 baseline, and cumulative livestock production losses reaching $318 billion by 2040 under a high-resistance scenario. That figure runs approximately six times the cost of acting now. The report attaches an economic argument to the WHO Global Action Plan on AMR adopted in May 2026, routing the same problem through food-security economics to reach agriculture and finance ministries that a mortality-based framing never reached.

FAO is the United Nations agency mandated to lead international efforts on food security, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Founded in 1945 and headquartered in Rome, it counts 195 member states and territories. On AMR, FAO operates as one of the three principals in the Tripartite framework alongside WHO and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, formerly OIE), recognising that most antimicrobial use globally occurs in livestock, not human medicine. The 30% projected rise in livestock antibiotic use by 2040 reflects rising meat demand in lower-middle-income countries, where cheap broad-spectrum antibiotics are a production input rather than a last resort.

FAO's framing of AMR as a food-security and macroeconomic issue, rather than primarily a public health one, is strategic. Cheap antibiotics keep crowded herds productive; resistance follows the use; and pricing the $318bn production loss makes the case to ministries of agriculture and finance that had been peripheral to AMR governance. That 6:1 inaction-to-action cost ratio is the lever, reframing mitigation spending as loss avoidance for the food system rather than as public-health expenditure.