ANTIBIOTIC RESIDUES IN BROILER MEAT SOLD IN DHARAN

Abstract

Misuse of antibiotics in poultry production may lead to severe negative impacts among which occurrence of drug residues is a burning issue. Sunsari district, in which Dharan municipality is located, is one of the major poultry meat producer of Nepal. This study aims to study the status of antibiotic residues in broiler meat sold at Dharan. A semi-structured questionnaire survey was conducted among poultry farmers and veterinary shops to collect information regarding their education level, commonly used antibiotics, poultry diseases incurred and so on. Then samples of four types of broiler tissues, namely, liver, breast muscle, kidney and gizzard were collected and screening of antibiotic residues in them was performed by implying microbial inhibition technique. The samples found positive in this first stage of screening were subjected to thin layer chromatographic analysis in order to determine whether the positive samples contained residues of ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, enrofloxacin, gentamycin and tetracycline. Most of the poultry farmers had an educational level upto school level and only a few of them had received training on poultry production. Not many of them had any idea regarding safety aspects of antibiotics and impacts of their misuse. The survey report showed maximum usage of tetracycline and doxycycline in poultry farms. Through microbial inhibition technique, 57% of chicken meat samples were found to contain residues among which the highest percentages was found in kidneys (72%) followed by liver (68%), gizzard (68%) and finally breast muscle (20%). Highest number of samples were positive towards β-lactams and/or tetracyclines (49%) followed by aminoglycosides (29%), sulfonamides (27%) and quinolones (17%). Residues of each groups of antibiotics were found in higher number of kidney samples in comparison to other tissues. Similarly, 36.84% of the positive samples contained a single group of antibiotics whereas the remaining 63.16% of positive samples contained multiple groups of antibiotics. Through thin layer chromatography, it was found that highest number of samples contained tetracyclines (21%) followed by doxycycline (17%), ciprofloxacin (9%), enrofloxacin (8%) and gentamycin (3%). Prevalence of antibiotics among different tissues was found to differ significantly.