In India, inland aquaculture has shown tremendous potential of growth. Among agriculture, aquaculture has been the top and fast growing sector and sustainable growth. However, there is further scope of expansion and growth of this sector to supply cheap source of protein and economics to poor farming community. It has been an alternative source for livelihood security, especially in coastal region of this country. In recent years, aquaculture is prominently developing in Eastern Part of India that is in Odisha, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand states. It is observed that with the increased productivity and efforts for enhanced production, there has been increase in incidences of disease occurrence, mainly due to environmental stress. This has led to increase in load of infectious pathogens, thus occurrence of number bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic diseases. To protect the culture animals, farmers are forced to use a wide range of aqua-medicines, drugs and chemicals in aquaculture to control production loss. Again, there are many aquaculture drugs and chemicals, which are required and useful in pond construction, soil and water management, feed formulation, growth promotion and processing, value addition of the final product etc. Use of such drugs, chemical and antibiotics in fish culture need to be minimized or discouraged as it has negative impact on environment and human health. Antimicrobials has a long lasting impact on aquatic environment and environmental microflora. Frequent application of antibiotics and chemicals give rise to large-scale residue of chemicals in fish bodies, thus leading to pathogen resistance and the decrease in the quality of aquatic products. As per the information available, there are regulations in different countries on use of antibiotics and chemicals in aquaculture.
In the present study, survey was carried out to assess market availability and use of different drugs, chemicals and other preparations for their use in fish and shrimp culture in selected districts of four aquaculture dominant states of India viz., Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Information were collected from around 300 fish & shrimp farms, 48 medicine shops in the region and 20 medicine manufacturer units. Data were collected in a project mode through stratified random sampling techniques. Farmers were observed to use a variety of antibacterials, antiseptics and water sanitizers to prevent and control disease outbreaks and minimize production loss. Six categories of aqua drugs and chemicals were found to be used by the fish farmers and hatchery owners for water quality management (sanitizers and disinfectants), probiotics and bioremediation products, antimicrobials, anti-parasitic drugs and feed supplements. Compilation of data indicated that most feed supplements and growth promoters products were used in maximum numbers (31%), followed by probiotics (24%), Antiseptics and sanitizers (13%), anti-parasitic drugs (10%) and least amount was antibiotics (4%). Significant observation variable use pattern of various drugs in four states investigated. These antibiotics/ antibacterials which are used either as therapeutic or prophylactic, may lead to destruction of the environmental microflora. This would lead to reduction of scavenging action by microflora, there by leading to accumulation of wastes in the farm. Another important factor, often neglected is that continuous use of such antibiotics may lead to development of drug resistant bacteria, including pathogens. There are several reports which indicate that use of antibiotics result in the emergence of drug resistant bacteria, some of which are human pathogens. Hence, there is an urgent need that the policy makers, researchers and scientists should work together in addressing one health issues to control occurrence of AMR.