Global research activity on antimicrobial resistance in food-producing animals

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global challenge that requires a “One Health” approach to achieve better public health outcomes for people, animals, and the environment. Numerous bibliometric studies were published on AMR in humans. However, none was published in food-producing animals. The current study aimed at assessing and analyzing scientific publications on AMR in food-producing animals. METHOD: A validated search query was developed and entered in Scopus advanced search function to retrieve and quantitatively analyze relevant documents. Bibliometric indicators and mapping were presented. The study period was from 2000 to 2019. RESULTS: The search query retrieved 2852 documents. During the period from 2015 to 2019, approximately 48% of the retrieved documents were published. The article about the discovery of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance in pigs received the highest number of citations (n = 1970). The Journal of Food Protection (n = 123; 4.3%) ranked first in the number of publications while the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal ranked first in the number of citations per document. The USA led with 576 (20.2%) documents followed by China (n = 375; 13.1%). When the number of publications was standardized by income and population size, India (n = 51.5) ranked first followed by China (n = 38.3) and Brazil (n = 13.4). The growth of publications from China exceeded that of the USA in the last 3 years of the study period. Research collaboration in this field was inadequate. Mapping author keywords showed that E. coli, Salmonella, poultry, Campylobacter, chicken, cattle, and resistant genes were most frequent. The retrieved documents existed in five research themes. The largest research theme was about AMR in Salmonella in food-producing animals. The most recent research theme was about the dissemination and molecular transfer of AMR genes into the environment and among different bacterial strains. CONCLUSION: Hot spots of research on AMR in food-producing animals match the world regions of reported hot spots of AMR in animals. Research collaboration in this field is of great importance, especially with low- and middle-income countries. Data on AMR need to be collected nationally and internationally to implement the “One Health” approach in the fight against AMR. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13690-021-00572-w.