Antibiotic Residues and the Public Health

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
THE evolution of antibiotic use in domestic animals followed very closely the development and therapeutic utilization of these agents in human beings. This fact is well-documented by an early textbook, Milks’ Veterinary Pharmacology, Materia Medica and Therapeutics, published in 1949. This text gives specific indications for therapeutic use of penicillin, tyrothricin, streptomycin, streptothricin, bacitracin, chloramphenicol, clavicin and chlortetracycline. The rapid development during the 1940s of these and other antibiotics resulted in the control of many of the infectious diseases of domestic animals, and a subsequent increase in food production. This success produced an attitude that encouraged the use of antibiotics in disease therapy for food animals, and contributed to the use of these agents as feed additives. This revolution in animal care and in production was so extensive that by 1969 it was estimated that over 80% of the animals consumed in the United States were treated with one or more drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (Van Houweling and Kingma, 1969). There is little change in these statistics today (Parkhie, 1983; Steele and Beran, 1984).

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: