Assessment of occurrence of antibiotic residues in raw cow milk and farm practices regarding antibiotic use in Kashaari, Mbarara District

Abstract

Antibiotics are defined as naturally occurring semi synthetic or synthetic compounds with antimicrobial activity that can be administered parenterally, topically or orally. Over use of and misuse of antibiotics in livestock management has led to presence of trace amounts of antibiotics in food products of animal origin. This study therefore was aimed to assess the knowledge and practices of farmers that lead to presence of antibiotic residues in milk from collection centers in Kashaari, Mbarara district. A cross-sectional study was carried out where a total of 15 samples were collected from the different selected collection centers. Milk samples were collected from the selected collection centers in falcon tubes and kept in a cool box for transportation to ABL. Antibiotics were first extracted from the milk samples and the samples were analyzed using thin layer chromatography. A questionnaire was used to collect socio demographic information of farmers, withdrawal periods, record keeping and techniques of administration. The collected data was entered into Microsoft excel, cleaned and coded then imported into STATA software for analysis. Descriptive analysis was used to summaries the data and odds ratios were calculated to determine the strength of association between variables. A study on 15 milk samples revealed a negative result for penicillin but a positive one for tetracycline in some samples, while analysis of 45 respondents showed a majority were males with secondary education, and significant gaps in their knowledge and practices regarding proper antibiotic use, including lack of knowledge on withdrawal period, poor record keeping, common use of intravenous administration, and infrequent milk quality testing. Odds ratios were calculated and there wasn’t a significant association between sex and level of education against farmers’ knowledge on antibiotic use. This study concluded that there is a slight presence of tetracycline in cow milk from some collection centers and factors such as lack of knowledge on withdrawal periods and not employing trained veterinary doctors to administer the drugs were most likely to be linked to presence of these residues in milk. However, there were no penicillin residues in all the samples tested. Therefore, there is need to improve farmers knowledge on antibiotic use to reduce on these effects.