Conclusions Regarding Microbial Inhibition Assays

In summary, MIAs are the methods of choice when a cost-effective qualitative measure of the biological activity associated with unknown antimicrobial residues is required. When samples are received for analysis at a control laboratory or at a farm/abattoir site, there may be very limited (if any) information concerning what antimicrobial compounds the animal was treated with therefore, the use of multi-residue broad-spectrum MIAs can rapidly and efficiently identify the presence of many of the commonly used compounds. At the present time, a selection of commercial kits is available in the form of tube diffusion assays, disk diffusion assays, and swab devices. 

While the MIAs are easy to perform and valuable tools for primary screening purposes, none of the current commercial assays offers a perfect match for the needs of a broad antibiotic testing program. 

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