A longitudinal Survey on Quantification of Antimicrobial Use in Some Selected Commercial Poultry and Dairy Farms of Bangladesh

Abstract

Making available of antimicrobial use (AMU) and antimicrobial consumption (AMC) data is very important for antimicrobial resistance containment. One of the activities in this regard is the AMU surveillance in food animals. The study quantifies antimicrobials used in Bangladeshi chicken and dairy farms, establishes rationale for their use, and categorizes them into WHO-CIA and WHO-AWaRe classes. This piece of work has thus been undertaken with the major objectives of quantification, categorization and rationalization of antimicrobials, used in the selected commercial chicken and dairy farms of Bangladesh. A longitudinal study was conducted to collect the antimicrobial usage data in commercial poultry and dairy farms involving summer/wet season. For the study, a total of 36 farms were selected purposively from Gazipur and Chattogram (18 from each district) that included 6 dairy, 6 layer chicken and 6 broiler chicken farms from each of the districts. Farmers from the selected farms were supplied with one trash can, zipper bags and data collection forms with a training on how to use those tools. Each farm was visited by the data collectors at least once in a week for data collection. There were correspondingly 285, 9690, and 13529 cattle, broiler chicken, and layer chicken involved in the study in Chattogram and 428, 9365, and 20312 in Gazipur. For data collection, one production cycle was considered in case broiler chicken whereas, in case of layer chicken and dairy cattle the study was conducted involving three summer months. None of the participating farms used antimicrobials as a feed premix or growth booster aside from preventive applications. The survey discovered 20 antimicrobial drugs used on broiler, 17 on layer, and 14 on dairy farms, respectively, weighing 3.3 kg, 9.67 kg and 1.072 kg. The total combined broiler AMU was 173.29 mg/PCU, layer was 285.80mg/PCU or 103.22 DDDA/1000 Chicken-Days and dairy was 32.93 DDDA/1000 Cow-Days. The study reveals that neomycin, amoxicillin, and oxytetracycline were the top three antimicrobial medications used in broiler, layer, and cattle farms respectively. The majority of these drugs fall within WHO-CIA classes for human medicine. A reserve antimicrobial, Colistin, was also used in both broilers and layers but no reserve antimicrobials were used in selected dairy fa