A 12-year-old program to drastically reduce the use of antibiotics in Danish pig farming has helped boost pork production there by 43 percent and has led to a significant reduction in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and humans, according to CBS News. Danish farmers now use antibiotics only when pigs become sick, in contrast to industrial U.S. pig farming, which administers antibiotics to all pigs to promote growth and prevent disease. Danish farmers report that they are producing pigs just as 
efficiently without antibiotics, and that their costs have gone up only slightly as they take other measures, such as giving the pigs more space in feedlots. All of Europe now follows the Danish method of reduced antibiotic use, a move hailed by public health experts in the U.S. and Europe because it reduces the prevalence of drug-resistant infections in humans and animals. But a veterinarian with the National Pork Board in the U.S. — an industry trade group — said the Danish experiment was not an “unqualified success” because it increased costs. The veterinarian also maintained that if U.S pork producers stopped using antibiotics in all pigs “we’d have more sick and dying pigs, and none of that would result in a benefit to the U.S. consumer.”
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