This resolves to Vox Future Perfect's judgement of this question.

Almost 70 percent of medically important antibiotics sold in the US go to the livestock sector in an attempt to ward off disease in unsanitary factory farms, giving rise to antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” which in turn make antibiotics less effective for humans. The World Health Organization has gone as far as to call on meat producers to phase out routine antibiotic use in livestock and only administer them when animals get sick.

New US Food and Drug Administration rules set in the mid-2010s led to a dramatic drop in antibiotic sales for livestock, but they’ve ticked back up since 2017. I predict that trend will have continued in 2023 (the FDA will release sales data for 2023 at the end of 2024).

I could be wrong, given that a lot of antibiotics are fed to cattle and beef production is expected to have fallen almost 5 percent in 2023. The pork industry buys a lot of antibiotics, too, and their production is expected to increase only 1 percent in 2023. Turkey producers make up a small but growing share of antibiotic sales, and production is expected to have increased almost 5 percent in 2023.

That should all lead to about a 1 percent overall decrease in antibiotic sales for 2023, but the amount of antibiotics purchased by meat producers doesn’t neatly correspond with production levels. For example, in 2022, the growth in antibiotic sales for beef and pork far outpaced the growth in actual pork and beef production. So, I’m going to predict an increase of at least one percent. —KT

Vox's prediction was "65 percent"