The routine tests performed today last for hours and are not able to detect all types of antibiotics in use. These limitations can now disappear thanks to an automated mini-laboratory developed in collaboration between two universities in Munich
No one is interested because antibiotic residues will be found in their milk. However, sometimes antibiotics are used even in dairy farms. The routine tests performed today last for hours and are not able to detect all types of antibiotics in use. These limitations can now disappear thanks to an automated mini-laboratory developed at the Technical University Munich in collaboration with researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and a commercial company.
Even in the most elite farms, including organic farms, dairy cows can get sick and require antibiotic treatment. Since drug residues in milk can be a health hazard, the milk originating from sick animals must be kept separate from the normal milk production line. Meanwhile, the European Union has set maximum values for these residues to protect consumers. However, the current method for testing the presence of antibiotics in milk is laborious and incomplete. In the European dairy industry as a whole, productivity and sanitation losses of dairy products due to antibiotic contamination in milk amount to more than two hundred million euros per year.
Dairies try to prevent the health risk through occasional sampling. Every milk sample that inhibits the growth of a unique bacterium undergoes a more comprehensive and in-depth examination. The main disadvantage of this method lies in the fact that it takes hours and is relatively expensive. If antibiotic residues are not detected in milk as early as possible, the result is many losses due to lost production and disposal costs, losses that may even lead to bankruptcy of the dairy itself. Due to these reasons, the dairy industry is frequently looking for a quick and simple way to reliably detect the presence of all types of antibiotics used to treat dairy herds.
With this goal in mind, scientists from the Department of Analytical Chemistry at TUM University and scientists from the Department of Glass and Technology at LMU University have developed a glass chip and test unit capable of detecting the presence of one or more of the fourteen most important antibiotics simultaneously and reliably. To this end, the scientists used what is known as an antibody/antigen reaction - a glass plate marked with the antibiotic dots; This device is known as a microarray. In the next step, they add antibodies to the milk sample that selectively bind to the different types of antibiotics. If the particular type of antibiotic is indeed found, most of the antibodies will bind to it, depending on its concentration. The rest of the antibodies will bind to the appropriate antibiotic anchored to the glass chip.
Using a chemoluminescence reaction (light production at low temperatures), such as that used to detect blood in MZP tests, the points containing the highest amount of the corresponding antibodies radiate the most powerfully. If the milk sample contains antibiotics, the fluorescence of the spot will decrease accordingly, since the antibodies have already bound. The intensity of the illumination is measured with the help of an electronic camera, which enables a reliable reception of the amount of antibiotics in the milk.
With the help of a collaboration with a German commercial company (gwk Praezisionstechnik GmbH), the scientists developed a fully automatic mini-laboratory, which, together with the microarray, enables a precise determination of whether the maximum permissible threshold has been exceeded in unpasteurized raw milk. "These types of microarrays have been used for many years in the medical field and in research laboratories," explains Dr. Michael Seidel, from the Department of Analytical Chemistry at TUM University. "This milk chip constitutes the fully automatic testing system that applies the method for milk samples for the first time in the world." It only takes six minutes to get the result. And each microarray can be reused up to fifty times. These features make the system the fastest and cheapest of its kind in the world.
The scientists are hopeful that the testing system will help prevent production losses and the high costs of disposing of damaged milk. "Not only will more than one hundred thousand businesses producing dairy products and more than thirty-six thousand people employed in the dairy industry benefit from our development, but all consumers will also benefit from a better health level of dairy products," explains one of the researchers.
The researchers plan to launch their innovative sensing system towards the end of this year.
One response
Cows do not "might" get sick in the barn, but necessarily get sick there in a series of diseases that require antibiotic treatment. According to data presented at the cattle science conference in Jerusalem about a year ago, it turns out that the percentage of udder infections increases every year, and that more than a third of cows suffer from clinical udder inflammation each year. Many other diseases are also caused by the conditions of the industrial barn:
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To say that "antibiotics are sometimes used even in barns" is quite misleading because farm animals are greater consumers of antibiotics than humans in many western countries. In Israel, 200 million chickens are raised and slaughtered for meat every year, according to the Poultry Council. Most of them (apart from the organic and natural chicken, which together make up less than one percent) are laced with antibiotics both to prevent the outbreak of diseases in the conditions of extreme distress and overcrowding and as part of various antibiotic growth catalysts, which are allowed in Israel despite the opposition of the Ministry of Health. Other routine drugs, such as coccidiostats, are mostly antibiotics. The public is not aware that most antibiotics are poured into chicken coops, which is very convenient for the pharmaceutical companies who want to portray themselves as saving lives and not as enabling the torture of animals and keeping them on the brink of survival in huge greenhouses for cultivating resistant bacteria.