Antimicrobial Resistance on the Rise

New findings released by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have reported that antimicrobials used to treat diseases can be transmitted between animals and humans. The report presents data from 28 European Union (EU) Member States on humans, pigs, and calves under one year old.

Discussing the report, Poultry World documented that resistance to fluoroquinolones is now so high in Campylobacter bacteria that these antimicrobials no longer work for treatment of severe cases. Studies found that in Campylobacter, extremely high proportions of bacteria were resistant to ciprofloxacin and tetracyclines.

Despite the increase of antimicrobial resistance, Member States that have implemented stringent policies are noteworthy examples for other countries. Broiler farms in the United Kingdom (UK) reduced their antibiotic use by 82% between 2012 and 2017, producing half the meat eaten in the UK and using less than 9.7% of the total antibiotics licensed for food-producing animals.

In the UK, the poultry industry set up the Antibiotic Stewardship group in 2011 to tackle antimicrobial resistance and pre-empt the need for new laws. Coordinated by the British Poultry Council (BPC), participants worked together, shared industry data, and managed a 40% reduction of antibiotic use between 2016-2017. Fluoroquinolone use alone reduced by 91% in the UK. On-going work is to continue in order to improve antimicrobial use, with better data collection and advanced rapid testing methods for antimicrobial sensitivity.

Randox Food Diagnostics recognise the need for antimicrobial detection by providing reliable and economical testing methods to monitor multiple residues from a single sample with Biochip Array Technology. With the Antimicrobial II Array Plus, Randox Food Diagnostic’s offer the detection of 6 classes of antimicrobial compounds including quinolones and tetracycline from urine and tissue samples. Additionally, our tetracycline sensitive and quinolones ELISA kits rapidly uncover additional analytes, with excellent sensitivity levels.

For more information please contact us at info@randoxfooddiagnostics.com

Or visit the meat and seafood section of our website at www.randoxfood.com