The economics of antimicrobial resistance in veterinary medicine: Optimizing societal benefits through mesoeconomic approaches from public and private perspectives

International audience; Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health threat driven by a combination of factors, including antimicrobial use (AMU) and interactions among microorganisms, people, animals and the environment.

The emergence and spread of AMR in veterinary medicine (AMR-V) arising from AMU in veterinary medicine (AMU-V) can be linked to individuals' economic behaviour and institutional context.

We highlight the limitations of current microeconomic approaches and propose a mesoeconomic conceptual model of AMR-V that integrates actors' strategic and routine behaviours in their context from a dynamic perspective using the concepts of externality, globality and futurity.

The global solution to AMR-V management relies on a trade-off between i) the global externality assessment of AMU-V with respect to AMR-V (public perspective) and ii) farm- or value chain-level marginal abatement cost evaluation (private perspective).

The improvements realized by the proposed mesoeconomic conceptual model include i) the simultaneous fight against the emergence and spread of AMR-V and ii) a local decrease in AMU-V without any loss of competitiveness for private actors due to the development of adequate production standards.

A set of generic equations describing the stepwise change in the scale of analysis is finally proposed.

This original contribution to the global challenge of AMR through a mesoeconomic approach bring substantial improvement for better AMU.

This model can be considered a way to smoothly promote institutional change and a call for public policies that support public private partnership in the development of adequate incentives.

The model requires further development prior to its application in a given value-chain or territory.