Faccenda turned to natural remedies, including probiotics and essential oils, in its battle to cut down antibiotics. Poultry vet St David’s Poultry Team introduced bespoke management practices to maximise bird health across Faccenda’s 80 farms.
Newborn chicks were treated with probiotics to encourage healthy gut development, and natural acids were added to the birds’ water supply to keep it as clean as possible. Yeast extracts were also added to chicken feed to bind any ‘bad’ bacteria in the gut, and reduce the risk of infection.
‘Seed, weed and feed’
St David’s director Richard Turner said: “We call this approach seed, weed and feed. We seed the gut with healthy bacteria using probiotics, weed out ‘bad’ bacteria and feed the ‘good’ bacteria with natural acids.
“The more healthy bacteria there are in the gut, the more competition there is against the bad ones, which cause sickness.”
Regular vet visits also provided Faccenda with an array of natural remedies whenever there were health challenges, the poultry processor said.
Faccenda general manager for chicken and agriculture David Neilson said: “It’s like a Holland & Barrett approach to bird health.
“We use essential oils, oregano and garlic. If the chickens get an upset tummy, we use natural oils to help them recover, rather than going straight in with antibiotics.”
Antimicrobial resistance
Faccenda’s antibiotics cut came as the European Food Safety Authority, the European Medicines Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, revealed even stronger links between AMR and antibiotic consumption in a report, released on July 27.
The EU agencies studied the antibiotics quinolones, cephalosporins, polymyxins, and many more, finding that their consumption led to resistance, in both humans and animals.
The European Commissioner for health and food safety Vytenis Andriukaitis said: “This new report confirms the link between antibiotic consumption and antibiotic resistance in both humans and food-producing animals.
“To contain antibiotic resistance, we need to fight on three fronts at the same time: human, animal and the environment. This is exactly what we are trying to achieve in the EU and globally with our recently launched EU Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance.”
Meanwhile, Faccenda’s agriculture director told FoodManufacture.co.uk that the UK needed to be more vocal in encouraging Asian countries to cut antibiotic use.