Antibiotic Residues in Milk Products: Impacts on Human Health

Abstract

Milk and milk products comprise essential nutrients for all age groups. Hence ensuring the quality and safety of dairy products offered to the consumers is mandatory objective of the dairy industry. India is the first ranker in milk production in the world (18.5%) with a total annual production of 146.3 million tonnes and per capita availability of 322 g/day India stands first in the milk production. The total quantity of dairy products exported from India in the year 2016–17 is 39397.61 million tonnes with value 91044.07 lakhs. Antibiotics are mainly employed for chemotherapeutic, prophylactic purposes and also used as feed additives to promote growth and improve feed efficiency. However, antibiotic residues in animal products may occur, when administration of drug in extra label fashion and not following of withholding period after treatment. The major public health significances of antimicrobial residues include the development of antimicrobial drug resistance, hypersensitivity reaction, carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, teratogenicity, bone marrow depression, and disruption of normal intestinal flora. The aim of this review is to present indiscriminate use of antimicrobials in animals resulting in occurrence of residues in milk and milk products and associated harmful health effects in humans requires control measures to ensure consumer protection.