Antibiotics in honey – treatment to prevent disease in agriculture
Antibiotics such as oxytetracycline are essential for the control of bacterial diseases of agricultural plants. Most applications are by spray treatments in orchards therefore bees collecting nectar from treated plants causes antibiotic residues to transfer to the honey.
It has previously been idenitified that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be found in the guts of insects feeding on a variety of plants, which are not exposed to significant levels of antibiotics in other forms. K Ignasiak 2016 Insects are responsible for the pollination of most flowering plants. Importantly, insects have an economic role, as domesticated pollinators bees alone contribute between $1.6 and $5.7 billion to US agriculture alone. This exposure to antibiotic residues can cause adverse health effects in humans via honey consumption and in the long term create antibiotic resistance within the entire food chain.
In order to help the honey industry Randox Food Diagnostics have developed Biochip Array Technology. Biochip allows for the detection of multiple antimicrobials / pesticides from a single honey sample. The platform enables the user to run up to 54 honey samples on the Evidence Investigator analyser in under 2 hours 30 minutes, allowing the user to consolidate costs and time.
Randox offer a vast number of arrays for the detection of antimicrobials in honey including: sulphonamides, trimethoprim, dapsone, Quinolones, streptomycin, tetracyclines, erythromycin, nitroimidazoles and many more.
We will be attending Apimondia 2019 in Montreal, Canada from the 8th – 12th September! Stop by booth B1 to find out about our full range of products for the screening of antibiotics in honey.
See our full range of arrays for the detection of antibiotics on Biochip Array Technology:
For more information please contact us via email at: info@randoxfooddiagnostics.com