UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Sept. 25 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. - For many years, antibiotics have been added to animal feed to help control harmful bacteria and improve growth. However, because of concerns about antibiotic resistance - when bacteria adapts to survive treatments that would normally kill them - the poultry producers are trying alternatives, including probiotics, which contain helpful bacteria, and essential oils, which come from plants and may have antimicrobial properties. Researchers at Penn State have now found that feeding broiler chickens an antibiotic, probiotic or essential oils did not significantly affect the overall diversity of antimicrobial resistance genes...