Sales-based veterinary antimicrobial consumption in food-producing animals in Korea: A population correction...

Quantifying veterinary antimicrobial use in a manner that allows meaningful comparison across countries remains a key challenge for antimicrobial stewardship in food-producing animals. Absolute sales volumes do not adequately account for differences in livestock population size and structure, limiting their usefulness for international benchmarking. This study analyzed sales-based veterinary antimicrobial consumption in food-producing animals in Korea using the Population Correction Unit (PCU) methodology and compared the results with data reported for 31 European countries in the Eleventh European Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) report. Antimicrobial sales were expressed as milligrams per PCU (mg/PCU) to adjust for differences in food-producing animal biomass. Analyses focused on cattle, pigs, and chickens and included assessment of highest priority critically important antimicrobials (HP-CIAs). In 2020, overall veterinary antimicrobial sales in Korea reached 241 mg/PCU, substantially exceeding the EU-31 level of 89 mg/PCU. Among the countries included in the ESVAC report, only Cyprus reported a higher mg/PCU value than Korea. Sales of HP-CIAs in Korea were more than threefold higher than the EU-31 level and approximately eightfold higher than those reported for Denmark. These findings indicate elevated antimicrobial exposure per unit of food-producing animal biomass in Korea when assessed using a biomass-adjusted indicator. These findings highlight the value of PCU-based indicators for standardized international benchmarking of veterinary antimicrobial sales and for identifying relative differences in antimicrobial exposure that are not apparent from absolute sales data alone. The contrast between Korea and countries with long-established antimicrobial stewardship systems suggests that differences in antimicrobial use may be influenced by monitoring and governance frameworks as well as production characteristics. Strengthening PCU-based monitoring, informed by international experience, may support more informed discussions on antimicrobial stewardship in Korea. Further research using prescription- or farm-level data is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of specific regulatory and monitoring measures and to better understand the drivers of antimicrobial use in food-producing animals.