Antibiotic use in aquaculture: development of antibiotic resistance – potential for consumer health risks

Abstract As aquaculture has developed, a range of bacterial diseases have been encountered that have caused both major production problems and animal welfare difficulties. These diseases were initially controlled almost exclusively by the use of antimicrobial agents. Fish farming is now a sufficiently large and mature an industry to have justified the development of an effective range of vaccines that have largely supplanted the use of antimicrobial agents for most bacterial diseases in salmonid farming in Europe and North America. For most salmonid bacterial diseases, use of antimicrobial agents is now largely confined to emergency use in the event of breakdown of vaccine protection. In addition to the increasing availability of vaccines, aquaculture is steadily developing a range of improved husbandry methods to reduce the impact of disease. Although there is evidence that antibiotic resistance can be selected for in normal therapeutic use in aquaculture, the risks of transfer of such resistance to human consumers by any of the possible routes appears to be low. Where new species are under development for aquaculture and during the development of these species, bacterial diseases may be expected to occur that will need use of antimicrobials for disease control before vaccines can be developed. If antimicrobials were not available for use with new species, development would be likely to transfer to countries with poorer controls on antibiotic use. Use of antimicrobial agents in ornamental fish, particularly in some exporting countries, is significant, and evidence exists that multiple antibiotic resistant bacteria may be frequent in such animals. Although ornamental fish are not eaten, they do enter homes and are in close contact with humans.