Uso de antibióticos e quimioterápicos na avicultura

Abstract

Soon after their discovery, antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs used in veterinary medicine for the treatment of diseases and bacteria were incorporated into animal feed as growth promoters (AGPs). Thus, since the 1950s, antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy have become an integral part of animal feed in large quantities, raising concerns about the resistance of bacteria to those transmitted from animals to humans. Therefore, worldwide efforts have been promoted to achieve prudent use of antibiotics in animal feed. Some of the criteria that constitute a prudent use of antimicrobial agents from different production systems are still unstable. In particular, the quantity and subtherapeutic use in routine use in animal feed to promote growth has been a topic of discussion (AARESTRUP et al., 2010). The European Union has decided to end the use of AGPs in early 2006 (DVFA, 2010), but this involves damage to livestock, because studies indicate that simple withdrawal of antibiotic growth promoters in the diet of birds leads to a decrease in the average performance of 3% to 7% and the negative impact on animal health and increased mortality. Thus, there is a need to introduce new strategies to circumvent these effects, and a widely studied nutritional approach is the use of new food additives that are effective in improving the performance of the birds, hypothetically through a modulation of intestinal microbiota (LANGHOUT, 2005). Among the new food additives can substitute for AGPs, have probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, extracts, oils, organic acids, among others. This study was designed to do a review on the antimicrobial and chemotherapeutic drugs used in poultry and their possible replacement by alternative products.