On 14 March 2025
The result of various research programs, Antibiodépendance - L'impossible transition de l'élevage industriel, published on March 7, 2025 by Presses de SciencesPo, examines the regulation of antibiotics in livestock farming in France from the 1970s to the present day. The book, coordinated by Henri Boullier and Nicolas Fortané, is the result of research by sociologists, political scientists and historians from the Amagri collective: Lucile Benoit, Delphine Berdah, Clémentine Comer, Joséphine Eberhart, Aurélien Féron, Muriel Figuié, Florence Hellec and Annick Jacq.
Summary:
Described as a silent pandemic by the WHO, antibiotic resistance is one of the major health threats of the 21st century. This phenomenon of therapeutic impasse, which renders our most precious medicines ineffective, is due to their massive use since the 1950s, in particular to support the development of an intensive agricultural model. Today, over two-thirds of the world's antibiotics are used in livestock.
To combat this scourge, France has halved the use of these molecules in livestock farming. And yet, as a vast survey of players in the industry (farmers, veterinarians, pharmaceutical laboratories) and in the scientific and political arenas has shown, agriculture continues to dig the furrow of its anti-biotic dependency. Farmers and veterinarians are not so much prisoners of antibiotic use as of an industrial system that constantly seeks short-term solutions to the health and environmental damage it causes.
You can now order the book directly from the Presses de SciencePo website.
