Antimicrobial drugs have played a vital role in health management of both humans and animals for more than 50 years. Nowadays, they still are essential for health and welfare of food-producing animals. However, the overuse and misuse of antibiotics have led to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which have become a major health crisis in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers the antibiotic resistance as one of the three greatest threats to human health for the next decades. Antibiotics might stop being effective in diseases easily treated.

The misuse and wrong control of antibiotics constitutes not only a great health problem, but also an economic one. Antibiotic resistance causes 25,000 deaths per year in Europe or USA and economic costs of 1.5€ billion per year in EU. Additional hospital costs per patient in OECD countries are estimated in 10,000 to 40,000 UDS.

More info: https://ec.europa.eu/health/amr/sites/amr/files/amr_factsheet_en.pdf

The sanitary authorities are aware of this serious problem and therefore the use of antimicrobials as growth promoter is forbidden in the European Union since 2006. However, this practice is still authorized in countries such as USA and China where the 75% and 50% of commercialized antibiotics respectively, are used for veterinary treatment.

Different institutions are working to bring awareness to the responsible use of veterinary medicines in animals and the control of residues veterinaries on the different points of food chain. The goals are to protect animal health and welfare, and public health; ensuring that veterinary medicines are used responsibly to optimise their effectiveness now and in the future in all species for relevant illnesses.

More info:

http://www.epruma.eu/
https://store.fil-idf.org/product/guide-to-prudent-use-of-antimicrobial-agents-in-dairy-production-in-english-3/

Furthermore, milk, meat and other foods should not contain antibiotic above the stated legal levels before being placed in the market (nº 37/2010). The early detection of milk non-complying with the residue criteria ensures that it can be readily excluded from further processing. Laboratories and dairy companies have a long history in antibiotic monitoring as they have dedicated facilities and skilled personal. Other actors in the milk production chain however lack of suitable tools to implement antibiotic shelf-control that would help minimising risks and economic losses. The current methods are manually operated, so the user should take care of the assay and needs qualification to interpret results and make decisions. Test4all is an automatic system for on-site antibiotic testing requiring minimum time and skills from the user. Test4all provides qualitative and numerical results from the screening of eight groups of antibiotics. Besides, the user can have remote access to the results.

More info:

http://www.epruma.eu/component/downloads/downloads/20.html
http://www.epruma.eu/
https://store.fil-idf.org/product/guide-to-prudent-use-of-antimicrobial-agents-in-dairy-production-in-english-3/