Currently, poultry producers use sub-therapeutic amounts of antibiotics in poultry feed as growth promoters and to control bacterial pathogens or parasites. However, bacteria can become resistant to the antibiotics, so USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists have been looking for alternatives. What they have found is that a hop plant contains bitter acids known to be potent antimicrobials. And it is feasible to use one of these acids called lupulone as an alternative to antibiotics in poultry rearing.
ARS scientists examined the effect of feeding different concentrations of lupulone to broiler chickens to determine the compound's impact on clostridium populations in the intestinal tracts of birds inoculated with C. perfringens. The research revealed that after 22 days - the timeframe associated with the disease - counts were significantly reduced in the lupulone-treated group compared to another group of chickens that did not receive the lupulone treatment.
Further, they found that lupulone controlled from 30 to 50% of certain bacteria in the intestines of chickens. Those bacteria not only can cause contamination of meat during processing, but also may pose major production losses by causing disease in the broiler chicken.
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