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Sub‐therapeutic Antibiotics and the Efficiency of U.S. Hog Farms
Author(s) -
Key Nigel,
McBride William D.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aat091
Subject(s) - productivity , production (economics) , antibiotics , livestock , microbiology and biotechnology , propensity score matching , agricultural science , sample (material) , business , agricultural economics , economics , biology , statistics , mathematics , microeconomics , economic growth , ecology , chemistry , chromatography
A substantial share of U.S. hog producers incorporate antimicrobial drugs into their livestock's feed or water at sub‐therapeutic levels to promote feed efficiency and weight gain. Recently, in response to concerns that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock could promote the development of antimicrobial drug‐resistant bacteria, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration adopted a strategy to phase out the use of antibiotics for production purposes. This study uses a stochastic frontier model and data from the 2009 USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey of feeder‐to‐finish hog producers to estimate the potential effects on hog output and output variability resulting from a ban on antibiotics used for growth promotion. We use propensity score nearest neighbor matching to create a balanced sample of sub‐therapeutic antibiotic (STA) users and nonusers. We estimate the frontier model for the pooled sample and separately for users and non‐users—which allows for a flexible interaction between STA use and the production technology. Point estimates for the matched sample indicate that STA use has a small positive effect on productivity and production risk, increasing output by 1.0–1.3% and reducing the standard deviation of unexplained output by 1.4%. The results indicate that improvements in productivity resulted exclusively from technological improvement rather than from an increase in technical efficiency.