An antibiotic apocalypse is coming. It threatens to reverse medical practice by 100 years by making life-saving operations impossible and turning routine infections into killers again. Rather than panic and head to the hills, we need to understand the heart of the problem, and transform two of the most antisocial industries in the global economy: agribusiness and pharmaceuticals.

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We’ve known about the problem of antibiotic resistance for decades. The reason we’ve not taken the action required to protect one of humanity’s most important medical breakthroughs is simple – it would threaten the profits of some of the world’s largest corporations.

The human cost of antibiotic resistance is mind-boggling. At least 700,000 people already die from antibiotic-resistant infections every year, and if we don’t take action, that number will rise to 10 million by 2050. Diseases from gonorrhoea to TB will become untreatable. Caesarean sections, joint replacements and chemotherapy could become too dangerous to perform. Unfortunately, when these facts go head to head with profits, they lose out.

First, take pharmaceuticals – the most profitable sector in the world. The so-called big pharma companies maintain their profit margins through very long monopolies on new (or newly adapted) drugs, as well as all manner of financial shenanigans. Far from requiring these decades-long patents to allow them to research new drugs, these companies actually spend far more on advertising than they do on research. They also spend more on stock buybacks to keep their share price high in the money markets.

During the TTIP negotiations, US agribusiness tried to undermine EU prohibitions involving the use of antibiotics

Big pharma is the epitome of monopoly capitalism. It’s not going to waste its time developing new, fallback antibiotics that will only be used as a “medicine of last resort” – because by the time their use becomes widespread, the patents will have expired and the profits will be gone.

But big pharma isn’t alone. In Britain, human overuse is still the main problem for antibiotics, but it is also estimated that antibiotics in animals accounts for 45% of our usage. British pig farmers use five times more antibiotics than those in the Netherlands or Denmark – and 25 times more than those in Sweden. Remember that most of those animals aren’t ill, but if you keep animals in overcrowded conditions, that’s the only way to stop them becoming ill. Industrial farming is now a major incubator of antibiotic resistance. It’s also a key way that big business keeps profits high.

Globally, animals (again, mostly healthy) are given twice as many antibiotics as humans. In the US, overcrowding takes place on a much greater scale, in living meat factories, where the use of antibiotics is endemic. They are even used to help animals grow faster.

Current prohibitions mean that much of US-produced meat that’s produced in this way is barred from entering EU markets. But US corporations are pushing hard for the extension of that model into Europe. During the negotiations for US-EU trade deal TTIP, US agribusiness tried to undermine these prohibitions. Post-Brexit, these corporations have a sympathetic ear from the British trade secretary, Liam Fox.

Both big pharma and agribusiness have lobbied hard against European regulations on the overuse of antibiotics in animals. They have significant clout in regulatory circles. In fact the funding for the body that decides on animal antibiotic use in the UK, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, also happens to come overwhelmingly from … the pharmaceutical and food industries.

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These corporations are the “robber barons” of our age. They extract as much wealth as possible from our medical and food systems, regardless of the cost in lives and livelihoods, and often taking plenty of public funds along the way. There are solutions, just as there are to the even greater problem of climate change. But they won’t come simply from lifestyle changes.

Clamping down on antibiotic prescriptions might be important, but we also need to transform the corporate model that brought us here. Big pharma and agribusiness requires heavy regulation. Trade deals need to be written in a way that stops protecting the profits of these corporate behemoths, and puts human rights first. Socialised medical research and small, sustainable farming must be funded and encouraged.

It’s big, but even parts of the elite are beginning to see the problem. There’s never been a better time for change.

• Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now (formerly World Development Movement)