Suchergebnisse

In feed production processes, factories usually produce different mixtures within the same production line. Consequently, remainders of the first-produced feed can stay in the system and be mixed with the following feed charge. This type of transfer (carry-over) is unavoidable in the production systems currently used, and thus, non-medicated feed can be contaminated with veterinary drugs present in a previously manufactured charge of medicated feed. The carry-over of veterinary medicinal products is associated with the risk of residues remaining in the tissues of treated animals at the time of slaughter and poses a health hazard to consumers. Producing safe feed and food products is, first and foremost, a question of good management practices at each stage of the feed and food chain, from primary production to final processing. Primary responsibility for feed safety rests with the feed business operator, who must ensure that all stages of production, processing and distribution under their control are carried out in accordance with relevant legislation, good manufacturing practice and principles contained in the HACCP system. Concrete steps for feed manufacturers to prevent drug carry-over are using one or more approved cleanout procedures of manufacturing equipment, such as cleaning, flushing or sequencing.

The attention of the scientific and professional communities, as well as of food consumers, has always been directed towards finding adequate nutritional strategies that could improve food production and safety. By using antibiotics as feed additives, farmers gained increased profits based on higher growth rates with better feed conversion and lower costs of therapeutic treatment. The quantities of antibiotics used as growth promoters for farm animals have been increasing constantly, but at the same time, the frequency of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and the presence of antibiotic residues in food have become a global problem. To eliminate or minimize these risks, on 1 January 2006, antibiotics were banned from use as additives in animal nutrition in the European Union. Accordingly, there is interest in developing new nutritional strategies that would support the function of the autochthonous microbiota in the animal gastrointestinal tract to control pathogenic bacteria. Probiotics, prebiotics, phytobiotics and feed enzymes are a new generation of growth promoters and largely achieve their effects by using the physiological mechanisms of animals and/or their intestinal microbiomes, enabling animals to completely fulfil their genetic potential with respect to production properties.