[Nutritive antibiotic additives in animal feeding stuffs--a further form of environmental pollution (author's transl)].

Feeding domestic animals with mycelia, a by-product of vitamine production, gave rise to the side effect of markedly improved utilization of the fodder. This effect is not due to the vitamine and protein content but to the antibiotic content of this waste product. The nutritive effect was brought about by a larger number of different antibiotics in concentrations which were considerably lower than the therapeutically required doses. Therefore we speak, in this connection, of a nutritive addition of antibiotics to animal fodder. Since at the time of introducing this feeding method only the mutational resistance to antibiotics of pathogens was known and since the nutritive dosaging cannot select such therapeutically relevant degrees of resistance of the germs, no importance was attached to the development of the resistance and its effect on human medicine. However, during the last decade it has been found that the feeding of antibiotics is indeed capable of selecting the plasmidic resistance to antibiotics of the gram-negative intestinal bacteria in the faeces of the animals. For pigs, calves and hens--to quote only the most important animals--now contain a coliflora almost completely studded with R-factors. Owing to the transmissibility of the plasmids and the epidemiologically short path from animal to man, dangers emerge for the human medicine from this nutritive selection. Therefore the use of all antibiotics which select resistance plasmids, should be avoided in animal feed stuffs. It would be best, if antibiotics used in human medicine were not used in veterinary practice.