Life after antibiotics

Life after antibiotics

Antibiotics have been widely used in animal production for many years now, mainly for therapeutic purposes, additionally for prophylaxis, and finally as a growth promoter in sub-therapeutic dosages. In accordance of the Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration of 1992, which arbours the idea, “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty, shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”, first the developed European countries such as Sweden, and following that the whole European Union area, have banned the use of antibiotic growth promoters, and also have limited the use of molecules that are relevant to human health, in livestock. Finally this year USA has joined the regulation and as well as Far East countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, etc. also are following a strong projection of decreasing the antibiotic usage in general. This positive approach, of course, brings a certain responsibility of such as improving the biosecurity, enhancing management measures, focusing on nutrition, the handling of the digestive tract, the use of functional additives, whilst most important of them focusing on tissue integrity, immunity, reducing oxidative stress, and also aiming to decrease as much as possible the bacterial load, that will be shed to the environment.

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