Each year, at least 23,000 Americans die from drug-resistant infections carried by so-called superbugs — pathogens that were once easily treatable but that can now withstand modern medicine’s full arsenal of antibiotics. And if recent forecasts are correct, it could get a lot worse.

Superbugs could in fact surpass cancer as a leading cause of death by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with a number of leading scientists, have warned that the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in both humans and animals is the driving force behind this threat to public health.

The U.S. agriculture industry currently uses about three-fourths of the nation’s supply of the drugs, mostly in the name of promoting growth and preventing disease — and experts suggest this can result in real consequences for human health. Animal antibiotics, and the extra-strong bacteria that often accompany them, can reach people via any number of pathways.

“Regardless of how much or how little food production has contributed to the problem, we need to rethink how we use antibiotics across society,” said Matthew Koci, a poultry science expert at North Carolina State University.

To that end, the White House, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Walmart have all independently made statements in the past month to the effect that the animals we eat need to be weaned off their routine low doses of antibiotics. The push continued last Tuesday, when advocacy groups sent a letter to the world’s largest fast-food chain, Subway, asking the company to join the growing list of major buyers and producers that have already called for major cutbacks in antibiotic use — a list that includes Perdue Farms, Smithfield, McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr. And on Thursday, Consumer Reports added further pressure with the launch of an investigative series on the misuse of antibiotics.

As some researchers contemplate the end of antibiotics, others are taking up the question of what we might use to replace them.

“If we’re going to take away one of the tools farmers have relied on for over 50 years,” said Koci, “then we need to figure out alternative methods to help them continue to produce the food the rest of us take for granted.”

One possibility could involve probiotics, beneficial microbes that boost the health of their host, starting with the gut. It’s thought that probiotics might be able to do the two most common jobs of livestock antibiotics: helping animals grow bigger, and helping them avoid disease. In late May, the Danish biotechnology company Novozymes announced a partnership to develop a new probiotic that it says could help transform poultry farming.

Can We Live Without It?

Predictably, a lot of businesses that depend on livestock are against the idea of phasing out antibiotics. Sanderson Farms, the nation’s third largest poultry producer, is one of the holdouts. “Frankly, after doing our homework, we do not plan to withdraw antibiotics from our program,” said Joe Sanderson Jr., chairman and CEO of the company, during a May 12 presentation. The company declined to comment to The Huffington Post.

“There are companies out there representing a view that I would say is almost parallel with coal companies who say, ‘We can’t do away with coal,'” said Simon Shane, a poultry veterinarian and professor at North Carolina State University.

But we pretty much can live without farm antibiotics, Shane went on — at least, in cases where they’re not medically necessary for the animals. “We have alternatives,” he said.

For evidence, look no further than Denmark. In 1999, the country — which happens to be the world’s leading exporter of pork — outlawed all nontherapeutic uses of antibiotics in pigs, thanks largely to the work of a young veterinarian named Frank Aarestrup. Aarestrup had blown the whistle after seeing a connection between the use of antibiotics and the spread of highly resistant bacteria.