Antibiotic manure makes the fields become breeding grounds for resistant germs

Also, biogas plants can’t filter antibiotics-rest stocks

Tons of antibiotics are used in farming each year in the cattle, in order to keep animals in mass attitude healthy. A large part of the antibiotics excreted by the animals and enters the slurry. This is then applied to the fields. This antibiotic residual stocks reach land unfiltered on the farm, where increasingly resistant germs prevail. This is the German Federal Foundation for the environment reported the results of a current research project.

In a current project, the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen on behalf of the German Federal environmental Foundation (DBU), and the relationships between the antibiotics in the manure and the increase of resistant bacteria. Because manure is often fermented prior to the application in biogas plants, it was examined whether antibiotics are there to eliminate, to reduce the entries in the environment. The project comes to the conclusion that this is unfortunately not possible.

Antibiotics must be reduced in the stable

“Antibiotics need to be in the allocation in the stables is reduced, in order to protect humans, animals and the environment,” stresses the DBU Secretary General Alexander Bonde in a press release to the project. In the joint project, the researchers sought after alternative solutions to the antibiotic to be filtered out from the slurry. The active ingredients are defied, however, different temperatures, and additions of acids and salts. The filter has no appreciable stocks were attempts to influence the rest.

A global Problem

In the year 2017, according to data from the Federal office for consumer protection and food safety have been used in Germany alone, 733 tons of antibiotics in livestock farming. But this is not only the case in Germany. “The world’s antibiotics in manure, see samples and fermentation residues from biogas plants”, explains project Manager Dr. Astrid Spielmeyer from the Institute for food chemistry and food biotechnology at the University of Giessen. In regions with intensive agriculture, both the antibiotics levies on the vets as well as the resistant bacterial load in the soil is most pronounced.

Agricultural land as a Nest for pathogens resistant to

“Around a third of the in veterinary medicine, submitted to antibiotics include cyclins to the antibacterial sulfonamides and Tetra,” says Spielmeyer. Tetracycline was also used in humans as a broad-spectrum antibiotic. This substance come in particular, if the pathogen can not be accurately determined. For the two antibiotics groups already resistant pathogens in the fields had been detected. The results of the project were published in a free-to-view the final report on the DBU website. (vb)

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