Antibiotic responsibility and agricultural publics: diverse stakeholder perceptions of antibiotic use in animal agriculture

Thumbnail Image

Files

s10460-023-10422-w.pdf (1.12 MB)

Links to Files

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-023-10422-w

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10422-w
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/28092

Collections

UMBC Geography and Environmental Systems Department
UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Student Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4586-7893

Date

2023-05-01

Type of Work

journal articles
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Lansing, D.M., Barrett, J. Antibiotic responsibility and agricultural publics: diverse stakeholder perceptions of antibiotic use in animal agriculture. Agric Hum Values (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10422-w.

Rights

This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Subjects

Abstract

This paper examines diverse perspectives around the concept of responsibility concerning antibiotic use in animal agriculture. Antibiotic use in agriculture has been identified as a source of antimicrobial resistance, one of the largest public health threats today. In the United States, efforts to curb antibiotic use in farming draws on a diverse range of actors—including farmers, veterinarians, consumers, and public health advocates—and relies on a mix of industry standards and federal guidelines around responsible use. The paper selects a similarly diverse range of people and employs Q methodology to query the points of disagreement and consensus around the practices that constitute responsible antibiotic use in animal agriculture, and who is responsible for antimicrobial resistance. We find a diverse mix of actor types across three discourses, but with clear differences between farmers and public health advocates. We also argue that, in some cases, points of disagreement and agreement are often based on different interpretations of ideas, indicating points of common ground where there might appear to be disagreement, and areas of difference where there appears to be agreement. We argue that these flexible interpretations of some of the key issues around antibiotic use are nevertheless grounded in durable differences in views of what agriculture is and what it should be.