Assessment of risk for antibiotic residues in milk of dairy livestock: A meta-analysis over the last decade

Abstract

Nowadays, different types of antibiotics are being widely used in livestock for therapeutic purposes to treat infections. Significant quantities of them are excreted and remain in produced food items, including milk. This indicates improper use of antibiotics which may have serious consequences for human health. This comprehensive review was conducted with the aim to summarize existing knowledge about evaluation of antibiotic residues in milk of different livestock animals. This review involves 35 articles retrieved from PubMed, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Web of Science databases published from 2010 to 2023 and compares on the group of antibiotics identified, type of milk selected and various methods that were applied to undertake the research. Results showed that cow milk is the most intensively examined milk type (88.6%), whereas others, namely goat, camel, buffalo and sheep are less investigated on antibiotic residues. Among the techniques, chromatographic is revealed to be the most common due to its significant advantages over other methods. In addition, it was concluded that tetracyclines with the share of 85.6% are the group of antibiotics that is the most frequently studied in research articles.