PHOTO: VOLGA INDUSTRY
PHOTO: AGROPROM UDMURTIYA
Russian milk processors are not allowed to accept milk with increased bacteria content.
industry, where the veterinary system is such that farmers are free to use antibiotics as they please while growing animals. They only need to make sure that the animal has no antibiot- ics in its body when livestock production is obtained. Ac- cording to Lyubov Savkina, commercial director of the Rus- sian Feedlot agency, Russian companies can use in-feed antibiotics in virtually unlimited quantities. “The main objective is that the residues of these substances should not be found in the finished products. Unfortunately, this approach significantly differs from the goals of the glob- al campaign aimed at abandoning these drugs,” she says. In Russia, milk processors are prohibited from using milk from cows with mastitis, as stated in the regulation on milk and dairy product safety. As Zhebit explains, this regulation sets requirements for the maximum allowable content of so- matic cells in milk, with stringent limits set for milk used for baby food production. “Raw materials from cows with mastitis cannot be processed due to the high content of somatic cells. During the long- term treatment of mastitis with antibiotics, cow’s milk also does not go into processing and does not go to feed the calves, which means it has to be disposed [of], which also affects the financial stability of the sector,” Zhebit adds.
System monitoring is flawed Veterinary control in the Russian dairy industry is not perfect, which means that when it comes to mastitis, not everything happens according to the letter of the law, Russian newspaper AiF reports. According to Vadim Smirnov, deputy director of the Russian veterinary body Rosselkhoznadzor in Kaliningrad Oblast, there are a growing number of cases where antibiotics are found in milk production. Quite often, these cases are associated with backyard farms. “A peasant gives [antibiotic] injection against mastitis to a cow and does not wait until the drug is out of the body, then sells milk from the animal,” Smirnov says, adding that some backyard farmers in Russia add antibiotics directly to milk from a cow that they know was suffering from mastitis. “People [farmers] do not want to lose profit,” says Rustav
Milk processors should ban unscrupulous suppliers. However, amid a shortage of raw milk in Russia, this doesn’t happen.
Aliev, director of a Kaliningrad milk processing plant, adding that his company could discover milk with antibiotics up to 15 times in a single month. “This is a real mess.” A test for mastitis in Russia costs around RUB55 ($ 0.9) per cow, and backyard farmers prefer to check only one in five cows. In theory, milk processors should ban unscrupulous suppliers that sell them milk with increased somatic cell con- tent or antibiotics. However, amid a shortage of raw milk in Russia, this does not happen. According to AiF, milk processors are not letting go of their suppliers because they want to protect their raw materials base. Besides, medium-sized farmers also have quality prob- lems when selling their milk to processing plants. Market par- ticipants believe the veterinary control in the industry should be strengthened to improve the situation.
Bacteriophages might be an answer There is a chance that mastitis in Russia could be handled with new drugs containing bacteriophages – a group of vi- ruses that infect and replicate only in bacterial cells, Russian news service Dairy News reports, citing local scientists. Since World War II, the rapid spread of antibiotics has killed global interest in bacteriophages, but recently it has risen again in response to expanding antibiotic resistance. Russia has good potential to design some novel bacteriophage products, since this class of viruses was studied in the Soviet Union more than in any Western country, the scientists say. The use of bacteriophages could contribute to significantly improving the mastitis issue in Russia by 2025, Russian sci- entists forecast in 2015. However, so far, there has been no noticeable progress in this field. Just recently, Russia’s first biological resource centre of bacte- riophages research has been created. The centre has collected a database of 10,000 microorganisms that will be used to de- velop novel types of bacteriophage-based drugs in the next 5–7 years. These could be adapted for different organisms and different bacteria strains and so would be highly effec- tive. Some new drugs are also promised for veterinary medi- cine. With this, bacteriophages have been included in Russia’s strategy to tackle antibiotic resistance by 2030.
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