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.
Description:
A dissertation submitted to the Department of Food Technology, Central Campus
of Technology, Tribhuvan University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of B. Tech. in Food Technology