ABSTRACT
While bird performance is economically important to the poultry industry, food-borne pathogens that have been identified with poultry, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter, continue to be a major issue of concern. Although more is being understood about their abilities to colonize the gastrointestinal (GI) tracts of chickens and the subsequent corresponding interaction with the host, questions still remain (Park et al., 2008; Dunkley et al., 2009; Horrocks et al., 2009; Finstad et al., 2012; Howard et al., 2012; Foley et al., 2011, 2013). For example, there are increasing concerns about the risk of developing cross-resistance and multiple antibiotic resistances in pathogenic bacteria of the host animal. In the last few decades, several antibiotics and chemotherapeutic agents have been used in prophylactic doses in poultry feed to improve the poultry performance and thereby achieve economic benefits (Jones and Ricke, 2003). As a result, there is potential for outbreaks of particular enteric diseases originating from food animal sources such as poultry that would greatly compromise public health treatment efforts
due to acquired antibiotic resistance (Jones and Ricke, 2003; Chen et al., 2015). These enteric pathogens could lower the productivity as well as increase bird mortality and associated contamination of poultry products for human consumption. These concerns have challenged the meat animal industry to seek a wide range of feed amendment alternatives to not only maintain live animal production proficiency but also retain quality attributes of the resulting food product (Jones and Ricke, 2003; Hajati and Rezaei, 2010; Alloui et al., 2013; Ricke, 2015).
