Antibiotic Alternatives Found in Cattle Microbiomes

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Antibiotics have played an important role in animal health for a very long time. But resistance and consumer pressures have livestock producers looking for alternatives. One of those is Resilient Biotics led by CEO Chris Belnap.

Belnap… “There are cases where we absolutely have to use antibiotics to help control disease and help save animals. However, if we can reduce the need to routinely use antibiotics and save them for when they're most needed, then that would be a really good thing that everyone is extremely interested in. And that's where our company Resilient Biotics, that's where we think that we could play a big role here in developing solutions that are centered around the microbiome. And so our objective is to really identify the best microbiome strains out there that serve that protective role and see if those can replace some usages of antibiotics.”

In their first product, Resilient is focused on bovine respiratory disease.

Belnap… “No one has delivered a microbiome product directly to the respiratory tract before. No one has attempted to control these respiratory pathogens in the way that we're doing this. No one has built the databases that we've built to mine the system, and try to formulate a new product that could help help the animals. So we did all that. And then at the end, we had our formulation that we delivered to the animal.”

Learn more at www.resilientbiotics.com.