Meat | World Antibiotic Awareness Week |Day #2
Meat
On Day 2 of World Antibiotic Awareness Week we are looking at the meat industry and their use for antibiotics. Antibiotics are frequently used for rapid growth promotion and prevention of illness in animals living in cramped conditions within the livestock and poultry industry.
The demand for livestock across the world has grown rapidly in recent decades due to a swift rise in the population across the globe. As demand rises so to does the risks associated with more animals being farmed an example of this being their living conditions, which tend to get worse as they are kept in cramp and unhygienic conditions. When kept in these conditions the rise of disease is prevalent. To treat these animals, veterinarians and farmers will treat the animals with antibiotics.
The use of antibiotics in livestock is decreasing in more developed countries with the UK now claiming that only 30% of all antibiotics used, are used in the livestock and poultry industries. More vigorous schemes are being set up to control and monitor the usage of antibiotics in animals.
The European Union (EU) have strict guidelines regarding antibiotic use in food-producing animals (37/2010/EC). This includes the use of hormonal substances for growth promotion, including zeranol and trenbolone, in addition to the beta-agonist drug ractopamine. Ractopamine is currently banned or restricted in over 160 nations, including Russia and the United States. New EU legislation which becomes law in 2022, bans the use of antibiotics on animals that are important for human medicine use and prohibits any antimicrobials in livestock without a vet prescription.
With over 35 years’ experience within the diagnostics industry, Randox Food Diagnostics provide the highest quality products, customer service and technical support to ensure the needs of our global customer base are met. Our dedicated research and development team have therefore created Biochip Array Technology to provide reliable and economical testing methods that monitor multiple drug residues in meat from a single sample, saving time, money and labour costs. Arrays include screening for residues of antimicrobials, growth promoting compounds, anthelmintics and coccidiostats.
Randox Food Diagnostics also provide a vast variety of ELISA kits to test for antibiotics in tissue, offering excellent cross-reactivity and unrivalled limits of detection. With results providing great correlation with confirmatory methods, we ensure that better science means safer food.
Links
For more information on our tissue screening methods such please visit: https://www.randoxfood.com/meat-and-seafood-analysis/ or alternatively contact us via email: info@randoxfooddiagnostics.com
For more information on World Antibiotic Awareness Week 2019 please visit: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2019/11/18/default-calendar/world-antibiotic-awareness-week-2019