Autovaccines as an alternative to antibiotics in the treatment of opportunistic diseases in animals: problems and prospects of production and application

As an alternative to the widespread use of antibiotics in industrial livestock farming and industrial aquaculture, given their consequences, the use of an autovaccine should be considered. Irrational use of antibiotics leads to significant contamination of the environment and food products with their residual amounts. Antibiotics and their metabolites have been found in samples of organic fertilizers and can also accumulate in the tissues of agricultural crops and then be involved in food chains, which can harm the health of people and animals. In the Russian Federation, the term «autovaccine» is not included in the legislation, so let us turn to an analysis of foreign experience with autovaccines. Having studied the legislative framework, we can conclude that autovaccines are vaccines containing antigens of pathogens of certain infectious or opportunistic diseases that are isolated from a specific herd. These vaccines are used to treat a specific herd. Most of the analyzed publications noted that the use of autovaccines has reduced the use of antibiotics. With the effective work of veterinary workers working at livestock complexes and employees of clinical diagnostic laboratories (competent work at the stages of sampling, their transportation to the laboratory, accurate determination of the etiological agent (agents) that caused the disease, high-quality diagnostic methods, adequate selection of clinical isolates for production), subject to the relevant rules during production and supervision during use, with a high degree of probability, autovaccines can serve as a good alternative to the widespread use of antibiotics.