Bacteriophage therapy for controlling poultry production problems

Today, many poultry production systems require no antibiotics ever. Due to the unavailability of novel antibiotics for veterinary use, presence of multidrug resistant bacteria, and official banning of many antibiotic classes for use in veterinary medicine for production animals, the need for alternative therapeutics such as competitive exclusion compounds, vaccines, nano-medicine, etc. has become an urgent need. In this context, bacteriophages are regarded as an antibiotic alternative. Bacteriophages are viruses that target to infect, replicate, and lyse numerus types of bacteria in humans, animals, water, plants, and food. They are classified into several orders and 15 families. Different preparations of bacteriophages have been approved by the United States of Food and Drug Administration for managing some bacterial infections. They have been globally used in the poultry production and processing. Therefore, the present review intends to expose every aspect of bacteriophages in poultry health and production which include the mechanisms of phages as therapeutics, their usage in the industry, and the limitations/threats associated with the usage of bacteriophages.