Manure Research

Lead researcher Diana Aga and colleagues from four U.S. universities are teaming up with dairy farms across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to study the effect of three different manure management techniques on preventing the occurrence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, genes tied to resistance, and antibiotic residues — traces of antibiotics and the compounds they break down into.

Investigations on the occurrence and spread of antibiotic resistance have been mostly conducted in the clinical settings. However, there are concerns that discharges from municipal wastewater and agricultural wastes may also contribute to the occurrence and spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment. Therefore, it is important to study how manure management practices and manure treatment systems can reduce the risk of antibiotic residues entering local waterways.

Although there has not been direct evidence of resistance spreading as the result of antimicrobial and antibiotic use on dairy farms, given the potential risk, the team of scientists will investigate the fate of therapeutic antimicrobials used in dairy herds. by examining if and how various methods to treat manure affect the viability of residuals monitored, and the potential movement of any residuals from farms to the environment.