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| ANTIBIOTICS AND FOODS: DISCUSSION | to Top |
Antibiotics are comprised of a large group of antimicrobial agents that are produced naturally by a variety of microorganisms. They exhibit selective antimicrobial activity. The successes of antibiotics in controlling pathogenic microorganisms in living animals have led to extensive investigations into their potential applications in food preservation. However, because of the fear that routine use of antibiotics will cause resistant organisms to evolve, their application to foods, with the exception of nisin, are not currently permitted in the United States. Some other countries allow limited use of a relatively few other antibiotics such as chlortetracycline and oxytetracycline. Most actual or proposed applications of antibiotics in foods involve their use as adjuncts to other methods of food preservation. This includes delaying spoilage of refrigerated, perishable foods, and reducing the severity of thermal processes. Fresh meats, fish, and poultry comprise a group of perishable products that could benefit from the use of antibiotics. (3)
In the United States, nisin, which is a ploypeptide antibiotic, is used in high-moisture processed cheese products where it is used to prevent potential outgrowth of C. botulinum. Nisin has been explored extensively for applications in food preservation, especially in preventing the outgrowth of spores. In other parts of the world nisin is used for prevention of spoilage of dairy products, such as processed cheese and condensed milk. Nisin is essentially nontoxic to humans and does not lead to cross-resistance with medical antibiotics. (3)
Antibiotics have been widely used to promote growth of livestock. For newborn calves and piglets, administration of antibiotics is useful to prevent infections caused by pathogenic bacteria. However, the use of antibiotics in livestock can have a negative consequence, such as the development of resistant populations of bacteria. Also over time, use of the same antibiotic may be ineffective. Residual antibiotics in dairy foods, meat, eggs and milk are unacceptable. (1)
The experiment on the effect of oral administration of Bifidobacterium pseudolongum or Lactobacillus acidophilus on calves improved their birth weight gain and feed conversion compared to the untreated control group. The birth weight gain of the piglets was significantly greater during both the suckling and weaning periods for the group that was fed probiotics than for the control group. This effect was more evident for the suckling period rather than the weaning period. Piglet mortality was decreased by the administration of probiotics for those who were not feed antibiotics. (1)
Previous studies by Biswas and Mukherji, have not only established the role of penicillin in the metabolism of higher plants, but also show that an external supply of penicillin enhances chloroplast pigment formation in intact rice seedlings and the greening of etiolated mung bean cotyledons in the presence of light. Further more, penicillin is shown to induce the synthesis of alpha-amylase and ribonuclease in embryo-less rice endosperms and to enhance the gibberellin-induced response. (2)
Biswas and Mukherji's present work describes the results of experiments with penicillin on rice seedling growth and metabolism. Penicillin promoted elongation of rice seedlings; the relative promotion of shoot elongation was stronger than that of root elongation. The seedlings that were treated with penicillin were maintained at much higher level of nucleic acids and protein, these metabolites were more pronounced in the embryo than in the endosperm. Penicillin not only caused small increments in respiration rates of seedlings, but also increased the length of the second leaf sheath of a dwarf rice cultivar. However the stimulating effect of penicillin on rice seedling elongation was partially reversed by abscisic acid. (2)
Although most antibiotics are not used in the applications of foods in the United States, they are currently being tested with favorable results on both plants and animals. However more studies are needed before antibiotics will be suitable for use in foods for human consumption.
Updated: Sunday, March 30, 2008.
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