Do Antibiotics from Animal Agriculture Enter the Food Chain through Plants?
In 2005, Kumar and others reported that green onion, cabbage and corn plants can take up small amounts (2-17 nanograms per gram of fresh tissue) of chlortetracycline from soil that had been treated with swine manure known to contain that antimicrobial. Uptake of the antibiotic tylosin was not observed. Other researchers have not been able to produce similar results. The assay to detect the antibiotics was an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). This assay reportedly suffers from significant detection interferences from natural organic matter that can be derived from plant tissues (Huang and Sedlak, 2001). A carefully designed and laborious clean-up procedure may enhance the accuracy of ELISA measurements however, the results should be confirmed with more conclusive analysis techniques such as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry or liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Do Antibiotics Used in Animal Agriculture Lead to Resistance in Humans? It is possible but a link bet
