Rome - Food loss and waste (FLW) can be a reservoir and even an accelerator for anti-microbial resistance (AMR), highlighting that it should be integrated into AMR surveillance and management strategies, according to experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Discarding FLW into landfills or open dumps intensify AMR risks, while some food waste processes such as composting can if done properly reduce antimicrobial resistance genes, according to "Risk of antimicrobial resistance spreading via food loss and waste," a new scientific review paper published in Infectious Diseases of Poverty, an open access, peer-reviewed journal.
Four FAO experts led production of the scoping review, including Junxia Song, a senior animal health officer who now serves as Chief of the One Health and Disease Control Branch at FAO.
"Linking food loss and waste to AMR is both timely and strategic, as it creates an opportunity for coordinated action that reduces waste while strengthening global efforts to contain AMR," said Junxia.
The agricultural sector is a known contributor to antimicrobial resistance, with animal production accounting for almost three-fourths of global antibiotic sales. Drug residues and resistance genes have been found in food at the retail and consumption stage, particularly in meat products but also in plant foods such as carrots, lettuce, leaf and tomatoes. AMR reduces the efficacy of existing medicines and is associated with millions of human deaths each year.
For this reason, FAO has long been active in the worldwide effort to mitigate such risks, including by reduced usage of drugs throughout the food chain. In 2025, Members resolved to ask FAO to further bolster the technical investment it offers countries to increase their investments, policy efforts and research into the topic, doing so in a holistic way according to One Health principles. The paper offers a narrative review of research related to the potential role of FLW in spreading AMR, a topic that has been relatively underlooked.
"Food is everyone's business, and safeguarding its safety is a shared responsibility. Reducing the spread of AMR through food loss and waste demands coordinated action across every sector," said FAO Assistant Director-General and Chief Veterinarian Thanawat Tiensin, who also heads the organization's Animal Production and Health Division.
Takeaways
Unsurprisingly, food waste is a good substrate for bacterial growth and could foster the survival of microbes and genes resistant to existing antimicrobials, the authors note. Studies conducted on samples of kitchen waste raw materials and of food waste at schools and hospitals show high levels of genes resistant to a wide array of antibiotics, sometimes including new medicinal products.
Some studies have found higher abundance of resistant genes in food waste than in sewage sludge or swine manure, long identified as catalysts for AMR dissemination in the environment. That is especially significant at a time when some countries are pursuing ambitious programs to channel FLW towards energy recovery or feedstock supplies.
Broadly, such resistant genes pose a more serious problem, in magnitude and diversity, in animal-derived food waste, especially fish waste samples, which points to the value of rapid food waste collection and control.
Composting, an environmentally friendly practice using FLW to produce organic fertilizers, may in some cases increase the prevalence of resistance genes, underscoring the value of optimization strategies and full-cycle processes, possibly including high-temperature treatments.
Anaerobic digestion, a process central to the production of biogas products, may be capable of removing AMR using certain techniques that warrant research.
A major part of food waste ends up in landfills in most countries. Apart from standard AMR challenges, landfills pose additional risks due to the mixture of biological substances and chemical wastes from industrial, agricultural and medical sources. They also exacerbate dissemination risks if open to scavenging animals, including migrating birds, or if they leach into surface or groundwater sources.
The report concludes that more data is needed from low and middle-income countries, where antimicrobial use is less regulated and projected to increase in coming years, and urges more studies to be done on antifungal resistance.
FAO's InFARM System is a suitable platform through which to collect and synthesize data more globally at a country level. The high road to tackling the AMR challenge and to assure that life-saving drugs remain effective is to reduce the need for antimicrobials, which another FAO initiative, RENOFARM, helps support countries in doing.
