Rush to replace antibiotics

WITH the EU banning antibiotic growth promoters in animal feed from 2006, alternatives need to be found urgently.

Even the use of plant extracts, once dismissed as quack science, is attracting growing interest in the hunt for alternatives.

At the University of Leeds in England, biologists are experimenting with essential oils from thyme as a treatment for coccidiosis in chickens, one of the diseases currently controlled with in-feed antibiotics.