Abuse of Antibiotics in Aquaculture and it’s Effects on Human, Aquatic Animal and Environment

The faster growth of aquaculture has ensued in a series of developments harmful to the human and aquatic animal health as well as environment. People are using various prophylactic antibiotics indiscriminately in aquaculture mainly developing countries to prevent different bacterial infections resulting from sanitary shortcomings in fish and shellfish rearing. Also, the abuse of wide variety human non-biodegradable antibiotics remains in aquatic environment. It directly causes development of antibiotic-resistance bacteria and transferable resistance genes can be transferred to disease-causing bacteria, resulting in antibiotic-resistant infections for humans, fish and other aquatic animal. The greater the volume of antibiotics used, the greater the risks that antibiotic-resistant populations of bacteria will prevail in the contest for survival of the fittest at the bacterial level. The use of large amounts of antibiotics that have to be mixed with fish food also forms problems for industrial health and rises the opportunities for the presence of residual antibiotics in fish meat as well as fishery products. So, to overcome this global problem; strict measures, legislations and regulations for the use of antimicrobials in aquaculture should be developed and implemented especially in developing countries, to avoid such negative impacts in human, fish, animals and environment.