Probiotics As Possible Antibiotic Substitutes in Animal Production and Their Implications for Public Health

The likelihood of the formation and dissemination of antimicrobial-resistant microbes has increased due to the extensive use of antimicrobials to prevent, treat infections and as growth promotion purposes. The review aims to highlight the possible risks to public health as well as probiotic usage as a substitute for antibiotics in animal production. Antibiotic use has significantly increased recently because of disease prevention and control efforts. The main cause of drug-resistant diseases in humans, animals, and plants is antibiotic abuse and overuse. Given that, the same types of antibiotics are used worldwide in human being and animals, this result in development and spread of antibiotic resistance that is risk to the health of people and animals. However, the usage of these antibiotics as growth stimulants by animal producers elsewhere except European could lead to growth of multidrug-resistance to antibiotics. Multidrug antibiotic resistance, however, may arise from the usage of these compounds as growth boosters. Probiotics have attracted great attention due to their beneficial impacts on livestock and people’ systems of immunity and gastrointestinal microbes. The exploitation of live microbes as probiotics has gained popularity recently as a substitute to antibiotics that is for promoting growth, medicinal, and preventative purposes. Probiotic bacteria improve an animal’s capacity to digest food and absorb essential nutrients, which helps the animal grow, fight off diseases, and produce meat, milk, or eggs. A perfect probiotic should have a broad range of potential attributes, including the ability to survive in the gastrointestinal or colonize it, be safe as well as non-pathogenic, useful to the host animal, have high feasibility, be steady in storing and in the field, be suitable for industrial production, and have acceptable risks to the public’s health