Antimicrobial use (AMU) contributes to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance, necessitating antimicrobial stewardship actions across all sectors using a One Health approach to preserve antimicrobial effectiveness. This overview delves into 2 FDA-funded projects focused on collecting and analyzing AMU data in major food-producing animal species (cattle, swine, turkeys, and chickens). Initiated in 2016, the projects aimed to establish baseline AMU information and pilot methodologies. This article describes the methodologies used by grantees for data collected from 2016 to 2021, emphasizing the diverse data sources and metrics utilized. Instead of summarizing the trends, it provides a list of publications generated from the grants. Factors contributing to successful data collection included early interaction and trust building between the producers/data holders and researchers. Shared challenges include limitations stemming from convenience sampling, variable industry participation, and lack of data covering all segments of a particular commodity (eg, data on breeding or young animals were lacking). Future collaborative efforts are needed to enhance data standardization, contextualization, representativeness, and reporting of national-scale AMU data going forward. Addressing these challenges and data gaps is essential for effective monitoring of AMU in veterinary settings and animal agriculture, in alignment with national strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance.
Keywords: animal agriculture; antimicrobial drug use; antimicrobial monitoring; antimicrobial stewardship; metrics.