How Does Agriculture Contribute to AR?

A problem arises when a plant, animal, or person becomes infected with a disease-causing bacterium that harbors antibiotic resistance to the drug that would be the most suitable treatment for that infection. In many cases, other drugs, to which the bacteria is not resistant, can be used to combat the infection. However, in cases where our choices of effective drugs are limited, or the bacterium is resistant to multiple different antibiotics, treatment for the infection becomes extremely difficult. The primary concern is that the bacteria that people contact (either through infections or in their every day life — through environmental or food exposure) are more frequently resistant to an increasing number of antibiotics.