Agriculture Business Week

One person died and at least 400 more were infected with anthrax after unintentionally eating infected carabao meat in Cagayan province recently, a provincial health officer disclosed to the ABS-CBN News (March 2, 2010).

Dr. Danilo Alonzo, Cagayan provincial health chief, said the fatality was the first case of anthrax they recorded in Lasam town. He said the man died of a heart attack, which they suspect was aggravated by the effects of the anthrax disease.

“The first case was recorded in a hospital in Lasam. He died [of a heart disease], but the doctor saw blisters and the man had skin infections,” Alonzo revealed, adding that these are signs of an anthrax infection.

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Antimicrobial agents, or a group of drugs like antibiotics, antifungals, antiprotozoals, and antivirals, are potent weapons’ against pathogenic microorganisms in veterinary and human medicine, the long term use of animal feed supplemented with low or “sub-therapeutic” doses of antimicrobials has come under the greatest scrutiny.

The main concern is focused on the potential emergence of’ antimicrobial resistance. Scientists have determined that the potential for antibiotic resistance to occur in food borne bacteria exists, but using science-based risk analysis, assess the human medical consequence as low.

It is thought that the mounting problem on human infections are difficult to treat due to antimicrobial resistance rooted in antimicrobial overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics, with antimicrobial resistance in food borne bacteria being only a smaller contributor.

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It has been widely recognize that mannan-oligosaccharides(MOS) and B-glucans are beneficial to animal health. Mannan-oligosaccharides are known to be able to bind receptors of the intestinal cell wall, disease causing bacteria and mycotoxins elaborated by molds. It is also assumed that B-glucans have stimulating effect on the non-specific immune system.

The cell wall of brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cells contains both MOS (25%) and B-(1, 3)-(1, 6)D-glucans (30%). One brewer’s yeast product is Biolex-MB 40. Processed by the Leiber GmbH of Germany, Biolex MB 40 consists of extracted, intact yeast cell walls.

CHEMICAL COMPOSITION
The proximate analysis of Biolex-MB 40 is as follows: crude protein, 25%; crude fat, 7%; crude fiber, 0.5%; crude ash, 4%; lysine, 2%; methionine, 0.55%; methionine + cystine, 1%; tryptophan, 0.20%; threonine, 1.6%; calcium, 0.15%; phosphorus, 0.45%; and sodium, 0.25%.

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The use of drugs in animals may seem a simple matter but improper use of drugs in animals can have significant influence on human health. Animals, like people, are treated with drugs when they are sick. In addition, food animals are dosed with preventive levels of antibiotic drugs even before they actually get sick, and when there is a great threat of getting sick. Because of the general tendency to look at animals as more dispensable than human beings, we tend to self-medicate animals more than we do human patients. One potential problem in veterinary medicine is extra-label drug use.

WHAT IS EXTRA-LABEL DRUG USE?
Many drugs are used in both pet and food animals in ways other than what they are indicated for. Extra-label drug use is defined simply as the use of an approved drug in a manner that is not in accordance with the approved label directions. The use of antibiotic drug preparation for humans in treating animal infections is an example of extra-label drug use, because nothing is specified in the label of such drug preparation about their use in animals. Another example of extra-label drug use is when a drug whose label direction says “for use only in cattle” but is used in pigs or other animal species.

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The first line of defense against agroterrorism is the detection of an attack.

Detection of infectious disease epidemics is a function of public health’s established systems of routine disease surveillance. Disease surveillance refers to the ongoing collection and analysis of disease information to lead to response and control measures. Traditional surveillance for infectious disease relies on a diagnosis being made, either because patients meet specific clinical criteria or because the diagnosis has been confirmed through laboratory testing.

SYNDROMIC SURVEILLANCE
Public health professionals also utilize alternative measures of disease detection, such as syndromic surveillance. The goal of syndromic surveillance is to detect an outbreak prior to laboratory confirmation on the presence of a disease. The syndromic surveillance process looks at pre-diagnosis events and data, such as healthcare visits for syndromes like food poisoning or purchases of various over-the-counter medications.

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“If symptoms persist call your veterinarian.” Many years ago this was the by-line of a radio advertisement of a popular over-the-counter antibiotic for farm animals. Calling the vet only when the animal disease symptoms persist despite treatment with that antibiotic is a take-off from similar advertisement of OTC medications for humans. This action, however; doesn’t work in the same manner as it does in human patients.

Over-the-counter (OTC) drugs preparations for animals can contain anything that has been so-called “approved” to be marketed and used for “backyard” animal farms. Almost all of these OTC preparations contain varying amounts of antibiotics, which by the way are quite restricted if not entirely prohibited in OTC drug preparations for humans.

There have been volumes of literature (technical and popular) written and published about the danger of indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animals to human health. While many countries have been quite successful in enforcing restriction of antibiotics and certain other drugs for use in farm animals, we are still far from doing the same.

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