Is there an alternative to antibiotics use in livestock?

Context

• Many alternatives to antibiotics have cropped up to help the food industry fight diseases caused by bacteria in animals.

What is Antibiotic Resistance?

• Antibiotic resistance happens when germs like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them. That means the germs are not killed and continue to grow.

What are the reasons for this resistance?

• The over and un-appropriate use of antibiotics by humans, agriculture, fishery, and livestock farming.
• The amount of antibiotics used in the farm animal food industry is three to four times more than those used by humans in many developed and developing countries.

What are the alternatives?

• Use of vaccines.
• Use of immune-modulators.
• Managing the chicks’ stress through clean air or assuring availability of clean sanitized drinking water round the clock.
• Herbal stress-relieving formulas, herbal liver supplements, cool hour feeding.
• The chicks’ health can be improved by adding organic acids such as acetic acid (vinegar) and formic acids to feed and water.
• Extracts from turmeric, ginger, pepper, and garlic.
• Enzymes from genetically engineered colonies of microorganisms and bacteriophages.
• Trade of antibiotics must be regularised for therapeutic purposes.
• State departments of animal husbandry must be strengthened.