A longitudinal study tracking antimicrobial usage across broiler production cycles in northern Vietnam from 2022 to 2023 has been published in Poultry Science, Volume 105, Issue 12, with a publication date of December 2026.

The research team — 14 authors led by Chen Xin and including Trang Nguyen, Quoc Hung Nguyen, Guillaume Fournié, Ludovic Pelligand, Damer Blake, Fiona Tomley and Dirk Pfeiffer — followed flocks through complete production cycles rather than sampling at a single time point. That design choice matters for practitioners: cross-sectional farm surveys, the dominant method in the region's existing literature, capture usage only on the day of the visit and routinely undercount total antimicrobial exposure per cycle.

Why a longitudinal design changes the picture

Antimicrobial consumption data in poultry systems is only as useful as its denominator. By measuring usage across entire cycles, the study establishes a per-cycle frame — the unit that veterinarians, feed mills and regulators actually need when setting reduction targets or evaluating stewardship interventions.

The geographic and temporal scope is specific: broiler operations in northern Vietnam, monitored between 2022 and 2023. That window places the data after Vietnam's national action plan on antimicrobial resistance gained traction and during a period when Asian poultry integrators faced intensified scrutiny over growth-promotion and prophylactic use patterns.

The authorship combines institutions with established poultry-health and antimicrobial-resistance research programs in Southeast Asia, including teams associated with the Royal Veterinary College and HKU-affiliated One Health researchers, alongside Vietnamese partner institutions.

What the study means for each audience

• Companion animal: Not directly applicable; the study population is broiler poultry.
• Food animal: The per-cycle usage baseline gives broiler producers and consulting veterinarians in comparable low- and middle-income production systems a reference for benchmarking their own antimicrobial consumption.
• Public health: Quantified usage data from Vietnamese poultry production feeds directly into One Health antimicrobial-resistance surveillance, the framework under which WHO, WOAH and national agencies track consumption in food-producing animals.

The regulatory context

Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture has pushed since its 2017 national action plan to curb antimicrobial use in livestock, and poultry is the country's fastest-growing protein sector. Usage studies of this design supply the measurement infrastructure that voluntary reduction targets require — without per-cycle baselines, neither producers nor regulators can verify whether stewardship commitments translate into fewer grams of active ingredient per kilogram of bird produced.

Full quantitative findings, including usage quantities and class-level breakdowns, are detailed in the December 2026 issue of Poultry Science. Veterinarians working in poultry-intensive systems in the region should read the complete dataset before drawing practice-level conclusions, as the study's value lies in its cycle-level granularity rather than a single headline figure.

By Amara Osei, The Vet Scope

Subsequent longitudinal work building on this 2022–2023 baseline will determine whether usage in northern Vietnamese broiler cycles is trending downward under the national stewardship agenda.