Technical Abstract: Antibiotic applications in agricultural and human medical arenas have resulted in tremendous increases in food animal production and historically unprecedented gains in human health protection. Successes attributed to wide-spread antibiotic use have been accompanied by the inadvertent emergence of resistant bacteria. A major problem associated with this emerging resistance is the cross-over use in agricultural settings of some antibiotics of importance to the prevention and treatment of human disease. This outcome led to calls to restrict the use of human health-related antibiotics in food animal production. Calls for restricted antibiotic usage have heightened existing searches for alternatives to antibiotics that give similar or enhanced production qualities as highly reliable antibiotics. The focus of this presentation is a historic perspective on the search for what are generally known as antibiotics and alternative antimicrobials probiotics, prebiotics, bacteriophages, bacteriocins, and phytotherapeutics. Applications of antimicrobials in food production and human health have found favor throughout human history. Agricultural and scientific advances, mainly within the last one hundred years, have given us insights into sources, structures, and actions for these materials that have found wide application in our modern world.