An Analysis of Antibiotic Resistance in Raw Milk of Organic and Conventional Cows in District Sialkot Pakistan

Over the last few decades, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been recognized as one of the principal threats to public health. Even though the emerging crisis of AMR was formerly considered a problem to human health, it entails a “One Health” approach, because of the animal, human, and environmental reservoirs. Here of the all-encompassing antimicrobial use (AMU) in the livestock production systems can result in the occurrence of AMR genes in bacteria that can be transmitted in milk, leading them into the food chain. This study aimed to estimate the AMR prevalence in dairy farm, using susceptibility testing of cow’s raw milk bacteria as an indicator to evaluate whether AMR patterns differ between conventional and organic dairy herds. For this purpose, an AMR comparison was made between the milk obtained from organic (No AMU) and conventional (AMU) cows for which disk diffusion method was used where AMU data were based on the injections given to cows. The findings revealed that 44% of AMR was found among all the bacterial isolates against five antibiotics i.e., amoxicillin (AMOX), ampicillin + cloxacillin (AMC), cephradine (CED), ciprofloxacin (CFX), and oxytetracycline (OT) at five different concentrations (0.1, 1, 10, 100, and 1000 μg/ml) where organic samples have shown 52% of AMR and in conventional milk samples 39% of AMR was observed, most likely because of the good health of cows and consequently less AMU in both types of dairy farms illustrating the problems in determining associations with AMU. This was a surveillance study of antimicrobial susceptibility in district Sialkot which has provided us with a rundown on AMR in raw milk as well as on the role of AMU in the occurrence of AMR in raw milk. Further research of the complete dairy farm environment is required to unravel the complex web of AMR and its matrices on dairy farms.