Pathogens animal feed production

In the decade of the 1950s, the use of antibiotics in animal feeds led to improvements in animal health and animal production. This contributed to the rise of large units for maintaining meat animals and poultry. These first 10 years should have given ample time for resistant pathogens to have become widespread. Ten years of this spread of resistance ought to have made antibiotics in animal feed useless or deleterious so that their commercial use would cease. Yet this has not happened, even after 35 years. The failure of such a series of events to take place is an unexplained riddle. 

E. coli 0157 H7 in cattle production, and is discussed further below. Managing manure to eliminate pathogens will reduce not only a source of E. coli 0157 H7 for the reinfection of cattle, but also the risk of transmission of this organism to the environment, including water and human food and animal feed crops. 

Increased awareness from consumers and producers has resulted in calls for more responsible and sustainable aquaculture. Public opinion and regulation authorities in most export countries focus now on the misuse of antibiotics in aquaculture, and public attention has focussed on alternative production methods (Verbeeke, 2001 Feedinfo, 2005). Furthermore, the EU has banned all antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) from livestock production since January 2006, as the use of low level AGPs in animal feeds carries the possibility of resistance transfer from the bacterial community to species that are pathogenic in humans (Liem, 2004). 

In general, nonconventional protein foods must be competitive with conventional plant and animal protein sources on the bases of cost delivered to the consumer, nutritional value to humans or animals, functional value in foods, sensory quality, and social and cultural acceptability. Also, requirements of regulatory agencies in different countries for freedom from toxins or toxic residues in single-cell protein products, toxic glycosides in leaf protein products, pathogenic microorganisms, heavy metals and toxins in fish protein concentrates, or inhibitory or toxic peptide components in synthetic peptides must be met before new nonconventional food or feed protein products can be marketed. 

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