A former Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilorin, Prof Abiodun Adeloye, has urged the government to stop the rampant use of antibiotics to grow livestock, especially chicken.

He said such practices could lead to health problems in humans upon consumption.

Stopping the practice, he said, would be a big step towards securing food safety in meat products with regulation on overuse and misuse of antibiotics. According to him, government needs to implement a comprehensive set of regulations including banning of antibiotic use as growth promoters in the poultry industry. Not doing this will put lives of people at risk.

He explained that people may be developing resistance to antibiotics, and falling prey to a host of otherwise curable ailments. Some of this resistance, he added, might be due to the large-scale unregulated use of antibiotics in the poultry industry.

He said the poultry sector uses them as growth promoters for them to gain weight and grow faster.

According to him, public health experts suspect that such rampant use of antibiotics in animals could be a reason for increasing antibiotic resistance.

International experts said large-scale misuse and overuse of antibiotics in chicken could lead to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the chicken itself. These bacteria are then transmitted to humans through food or environment. Additionally, eating small doses of antibiotics through chicken could also lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans.

Studies are being undertaken to ascertain the linkage between overuse of antibiotics in poultry farms and antibiotic resistance in humans. They found that resistance was very high against ciprofloxacin, doxycycline and tetracycline. These are the same antibiotics that were detected in the chicken samples. The problem is compounded by the fact that many essential and important antibiotics for humans are being used by the poultry industry.

In the United States (US), which is one of the largest users of antibiotics for animal food production, more than two million people suffer from antibiotic resistance-related illnesses every year; with 23,000 of them succumbing to the diseases. Annual healthcare costs due to antibiotic resistance are estimated to be as high as $20 billion.

Global industry operators fear ban on antibiotic in animal feed could hamper poultry and meat sectors.