Continuing Environmental Effects of Antibiotics Used in Livestock Farms

Abstract

The overuse of antibiotics to counteract animal diseases and in arable farming, such as the utilization of manure and bio solids as fertilizers and the use of reclaimed water, have been significantly contributing to the environmental contamination from antibiotics and to the selection of antibiotic resistance genes. The selection and transmission of ARGs, which give resistance bacteria (ARB) the ability to overcome the effects of antibiotics, is a phenomenon well known in hospitals, where antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria can persist and infect patients in the nosocomial environment in different ways.