Each time you eat chicken, you could also be consuming a cocktail of antibiotics. A lab study released by the Centre for Science and Environment found antibiotic residues in 40% of chicken samples bought from outlets in Delhi and the National Capital Region.
While the amount of antibiotics found in each sample was not very high, experts said regular consumers of such meat could be in danger of developing antibiotic resistance. In other words, eating chicken with drug traces over a period of time could make you immune to important antibiotics prescribed to treat common illnesses.
The study said it had evidence of largescale and reckless use of antibiotics by poultry owners, which can also lead to antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in the birds itself.
CSE said it conducted the study after being alerted by doctors, including Bangalorebased cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty, about a rising trend of antibiotic resistance among patients.
CSE said 22.9% of the 70 samples collected contained residues of one antibiotic while 17.1% had more than one. A sample purchased from Gurgaon was found to have a cocktail of as many as three antibiotics.
The CSE report, released on Wednesday, said poultry owners routinely pumped antibiotics into chicken during their short life of about 35 to 42 days, to promote growth so that they look bigger and also to treat or prevent infections. India has no law to regulate antibiotic use in the poultry sector.
CSE’s research team tested chicken samples at its Pollution Monitoring Laboratory. Three tissues in each sample were tested — muscle, kidney and liver.
Residues of five of the six antibiotics were found in all three tissues of the samples in the range of 3.37 to 131.75 micrograms per kg.
According to Dr Shetty, after a researcher conducted a study on antibiotic resistance at his hospital, they found about 10% of the patients to be resistant to common antibiotics.
“These are people who probably haven’t taken antibiotics before. They are villagers. We started thinking it could be caused from the food they are eating. That is why I approached CSE to do a study and now the data says it all,” he said on a live video chat from Bangalore during the presentation of the findings.
Dr Shetty also said that the li kelihood of becoming antibiotic resistant after eating chicken depended on how often one ate chicken. “If you are eating poultry chicken on a daily basis then you could be at a higher risk. That is why I asked my family to get only village reared chicken not the poultry ones,“ he said.
Dr Randeep Guleria, head of pulmonary medicine at AIIMS, said he wasn't surprised that antibiotics were entering the food chain through poultry .
“The findings aren't surprising. It's a big concern and in the last few years after the NDM 1 superbug scare, the medical community has been raising concern about indiscriminate use of antibiotics in poultry and agriculture,“ Dr Guleria said. Said Chandra Bhushan, CSE's deputy director general, “Our study is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more antibiotics that are rampantly used that the lab has not tested.“
Health minister Harsh Vardhan said he would react to the findings only after reading the entire lab report.
CSE also conducted a review of 13 research studies on antibiotic resistance (ABR) in the country since 2002 and found that ABR levels were very high for ciprofloxacin and doxycycline, both used for illnesses such as diarrhoea, pneumonia and urinary tract infections. High level residues of the same antibiotics were found in chicken samples tested by CSE. The problem, according to CSE, is compounded by the fact that antibiotics essential for humans are now used in the poultry industry .
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