Drug Enrichment of Commercial Poultry Feeds and Human Health in the Tropical Developing Countries

Abstract

Eighty per cent of Enterobacteriaceae isolates from battery poultry exhibited drug resistance in a survey among university and commercial poultry flocks. These birds, being a source of human food, may serve as an important reservoir for human pathogenic drug-resistant enteric organisms. Feeds used on University and Commercial poultry farms were found to be inhibitory to standard test organisms - Oxford strain of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli K 12 J5 NA+ Lac-. Feed additives, which purportedly were mineral and vitamin supplements, were found to be highly laden with antibacterials, a quantitative estimation of which revealed that one of them, termed A & D Crumbles contained as much as 3000 (three thousand) µg of antibiotic per g, while another feed additive known as ADVIT contained 130 µg of antibiotic per g of the feed supplement. These are routinely added to poultry feeds, a practice which may easily lead to development of drug resistance among enteric pathogens that may, in turn, reach humans and complicate therapy of human bacterial infections. This may be of a considerable public health significance.