Antibiotic use in pig farming and its associated factors in L County in Yunnan, China

China has a long history of pig rearing, and it currently raises and consumes approximately half of the pigs in the world. Major improvements have been made in pig farming in China in the last four decades with the growing application of new livestock farming technologies. Among the new improvements, the use of antibiotics in pig farming is a common but not well‐documented practise. In order to understand the behaviour of the farmers regarding antibiotic use in pig farming, we conducted a household survey in four townships of L County in Yunnan Province, China, during August 2014 and April 2015. In this survey, 404 farmer households were interviewed using a questionnaire. Among the farmers interviewed, 89% reported easy access to antibiotics, 83.7% reported experience of self‐purchasing antibiotics, and 40.3% reported that they often used antibiotics in pig farming mainly for the prevention and treatment of pig diseases. These farmers identified 20 antibiotics that they had used in pig farming 6 months before the survey. Of these, 11 and 8 antibiotics have been categorised under ‘critically important’ and ‘highly important’ antimicrobial groups, respectively, by the World Health Organization (WHO), and 12 and 8 have been categorised under the ‘Watch’ and ‘Access’ groups, respectively, as per the 2019 WHO AWaRe classification of antibiotics. Factors associated with the behaviour of self‐purchasing antibiotics included types of farms, sources of antibiotics, and previous experiences of pig diseases: those who were smallholders, buying antibiotics from veterinary drugstores and village vets, and whose pigs had suffered diseases previously were more likely to self‐purchase antibiotics for their pigs. Farmers who cleaned their pigsties less frequently and those whose pigs had suffered from diseases used antibiotics more frequently as compared to their peer farmers. This survey conducted in a county in Yunnan Province of China finds out that 83.7% of the farmers reported ‘self‐purchasing’ antibiotics for their pigs and 40.3% of the farmers expressed that they ‘often’ use antibiotics in pig farming with the major purposes being prevention and treatment of pig diseases.