Question: About the risk for human in using antibiotic upon farmed animals. Not bacterial resistance but the possibility of transmission between human and animals. In farms, all the animals take antibiotics, what are the consequences upon animal which were not sick, and how antibiotic can affect the quality of the meat or represent a risk for us in our alimentation.

Sally Cutler answered on 17 Nov 2014:

Hi this is a great point to raise. For many years antibiotics have been used to promote growth of livestock and this has probably been a major contributing factor in the developement of resistance. Although now a banned practice in Europe, it still goes on elsewhere around the globe. I can remember testing milk from supermarkets for the presence of antibiotics and finding it was often positive (but have not tested this since the EU ban on use of antibiotics as growth promoters). Not only has resistance got into these animals, but also in wildlife too! Scary findings. I often get my students to assess multi-drug resistant bacteria from wild bird droppings, foxes etc and we get a lot of positives. Controls are now being introduced, but wish this had happened a long time ago, but it takes a while to influence policy makers to take action. The risks are that there is now a bigger chance that any infections we acquire will be resistant to antimicrobials that would previously have cured us. Very few new antibiotics have been developed recently, so how can we manage infections in the future? This is an area that at last is receiving research funding, but it can take 10 years to get a new antibiotic from the lab to where we can have this fully tested for safety and efficacy to use clinically. Hope this helps.