Where is metaphylaxis banned? That’s like a basic tenet.

A basic tenet of what?

Not sure about the definitions about prophylaxis and metaphylaxis but I was under the impression any systemic use of antibiotic use in healthy animals was outlawed e.g. in the EU.

How to determine this? Do you have to analyse supply chain or do you just have no chain (i.e. you are near farm and you know farm owner)?

EDIT: Thank you to responses below.

I just look at the flag and know which countries have good meat. E.g. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-usage-in-lives...

There may be local regulations or labellings to (e.g. some organic labeling means no antibiotic and so on). But as a first rule I just try to avoid meat from "bad" countries. E.g. we get quite a lot of imported Brazilian beef in stores and I know it's terrible both for deforestation and antibiotics so I avoid that completely. Some interesting differences in the map is e.g. between Australia And NZ.

Seems a bit rough and ready, why not use a more granular map:

https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article/figure?...

or read through the two major cited articles:

Mulchandani et al. (2023) Global trends in antimicrobial use in food-producing animals: 2020 to 2030 https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1...

Delia Grace (2015) Review of Evidence on Antimicrobial Resistance and Animal Agriculture in Developing Countries https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a0897e40f0b...

There's some devil in the details, of course, are the antimicrobials used in animals the same as those used in humans? ie. Does increasing resistance in animals to X product result in resistance to Y product as used in humans?

Australia thinks it has the right solution here: https://www.amr.gov.au/about-amr/amr-australia/animal-health

Food labeling is often limited to country of origin. I don't see how a more granular map is helpful.

Slightly off topic but how is NZ lamb so insanely cheap (in Europe)?

How does the economics of shipping frozen and refrigerated lamb to Europe work out for this to make business sense?

Sheep are pretty easy keepers. They need less hands-on care than many other livestock (other than shearing, which produces wool that can be sold), they don't require shelter, they don't require strong fences, they don't require high-quality feed, etc.

There can also be other forces at play. For example, we have just transitioned from la Nina (which brings high rainfall to this part of the world) to el Nino (which brings drought), so a lot of farmers will be downsizing their flocks.

Changes in wool prices can also affect lamb prices.

As an Australian, I find that map downright depressing. Antibiotic resistance here is serious enough to make the lowbrow TV news on occasion.

So all your meat is imported from another country? Surely in the long run there are better more sustainable ways

Luckily for me I can just avoid buying imported from bad countries like Brazil. All imported from good countries AND all local meat is ok (because I live in one of the good areas on the map). If I did live in (say) Poland, it would be harder and more expensive, but I'm sure it would be possible to avoid buying domestic, and it wouldn't necessarily be that much less sustainable. At least not compared to buying things imported from a different continent.

I'm pretty sure that Hongkong and Singapore import 100%, but maybe some chicken eggs are grown in Singapore.

> In January 2022, the routine use of antibiotics was banned in the EU, and preventative use was restricted to exceptional treatments of individual animals

EU law is pretty strict about labelling meat coming from the EU/outside the EU so that could be one way.

Organic meat generally implies no antibiotics, for example under the USDA label.