STUDY FINDS ANTIBIOTIC RESIDUES IN POULTRY
Claiming that it found
several antibiotic residues in chickens tested in Delhi-NCR region, an
environment body Wednesday said "large-scale and indiscriminate" use
of antibiotics in poultry industry might be "strongly linked" to
growing antibiotic resistance in Indians.
The Centre for Science
and Environment (CSE) also sought implementation of a comprehensive set of
regulations including banning of antibiotic use as growth promoters in the
poultry industry as it puts lives of people at risk.
It said that 70
chicken samples from Delhi-NCR region were tested for six commonly used
antibiotics during a recent study. While 40 per cent tested positive, residues
of more than one antibiotic were found in 17 per cent samples.
"Indians are
developing resistance to antibiotics and hence falling prey to a host of
otherwise curable ailments. Some of this resistance might be due to large-scale
unregulated use of antibiotics in the poultry industry," CSE said.
The New Delhi-based research
and advocacy think-tank said that antibiotics which are important to treat
diseases in humans, like ciprofloxacin, are being rampantly used by the
industry. This is leading to increased cases of antibiotic resistance in India.
"Antibiotics are
no more restricted to humans nor limited to treating diseases. The poultry
industry uses antibiotics as a growth promoter. Chickens are fed antibiotics so
that they gain weight and grow faster," said Sunita Narain, Director
General while releasing the study conducted by CSE's Pollution Monitoring
Laboratory (PML).
The CSE said that
India has no regulation on controlling antibiotic use in the poultry industry
or to control sales of antibiotics to the industry while it has not set any
limits for antibiotic residues in chicken.
Giving details, CSE
said that PML tested 70 samples of chicken in Delhi and NCR out of which 36
samples were picked from Delhi, 12 from Noida, eight from Gurgaon and seven
each from Faridabad and Ghaziabad.
Three tissues muscle,
liver and kidney were tested for the presence of six antibiotics widely used in
poultry - oxytetracycline, chlortetracycline and doxycycline (class
tetracyclines), enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin (class fluoroquinolones) and
neomycin, an aminoglycoside.
"Residues of five
of the six antibiotics were found in all the three tissues of the chicken
samples. They were in the range of 3.37-131.75 g/kg. Of the 40 per cent samples
found tainted with antibiotic residues, 22.9 per cent contained residues of
only one antibiotic while the remaining 17.1 per cent samples had residues of
more than one antibiotic, the study said.
"Public health
experts have long suspected that such rampant use of antibiotics in animals
could be a reason for increasing antibiotic resistance in India," said
Chandra Bhushan, CSE's deputy director general.
"But the
government has no data on the use of antibiotics in the country, let alone on
the prevalence of antibiotic resistance. Our study proves the rampant use and
also shows that this can be strongly linked to growing antibiotic resistance in
humans in India," he added.
Explaining the fallout
of this, CSE officials said that large-scale misuse and overuse of antibiotics
in poultry industry is leading to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria in the chicken itself.
These bacteria are
then transmitted to humans through food or environment. Additionally, eating
small doses of antibiotics through chicken can also lead to development of
antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans, the study said.
It said that in India,
there is growing evidence that resistance to fluoroquinolones such as
ciprofloxacin is rapidly increasing.
Treating fatal
diseases like sepsis, pneumonia and tuberculosis (TB) with fluoroquinolones is
becoming tough because microbes that cause these diseases are increasingly
becoming resistant to fluoroquinolones, the study said.
CSE researchers point
out that antibiotics are frequently pumped into chicken during its life cycle
of 35-42 days. They are occasionally given as a drug to treat infections
regularly mixed with feed to promote growth and routinely administered to all
birds for several days to prevent infections.
"Our study is
only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more antibiotics that are rampantly
used that the lab has not tested," Bhushan said.
The CSE also
recommended banning the use of antibiotics as growth promoters and for mass
disease prevention, not allowing antibiotics critical for humans in poultry
industry, not using antibiotics as a feed additive, regulation of poultry feed
industry by the government and not selling unlicensed and unlabelled
antibiotics in market among others.
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