Livestock treatment may offer solution to antibiotics crisis, say scientists

Dosing animals with antibodies from their own immune systems could prevent illness and reduce the need for antibiotics

Using animals' own immune systems may provide a way to reduce the overuse of antibiotics in farming, replacing the drugs with cheap farm byproducts and cutting the growing risk of resistance to common medicines, new research has suggested.

Natural antibodies, produced by the immune system without previous infection, in animals and humans, can protect the body against harmful bacteria. They are present in some usually unconsidered farm byproducts, such as the whey left over from milk production, and they could be administered to animals easily in feed.