12/16/2025
Great information! The more we know as pet owners, the better choices we can make for our situations and pets health.
Check Your Probiotic Label for Enterococcus Faecium!🦠
Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest health threats in the world. It happens when bacteria learn how to survive antibiotics, making infections harder, or sometimes impossible, to treat. This problem affects people, animals, and the environment, which is why it is called a One Health issue.
While Enterococcus faecium SF68 itself is often characterized as safe, genomic safety evaluations of SF68 indicate that it has not acquired the important resistance determinants that are most problematic in clinical antibiotic-resistant Enterococcus strains. However, Enterococcus faecium as a species is known to be capable of acquiring and carrying antibiotic-resistance genes, especially on mobile elements like plasmids and transposons that can spread between bacteria.
Because of this, scientists are looking for ways to reduce antibiotic use. Probiotics are often suggested as one option because they can support gut health and may reduce the need for antibiotics. However, there is an important concern. Some probiotics may carry antibiotic resistance genes that bacteria can pass to one another.
Researchers in a new peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, tested 10 popular probiotic products for dogs and cats. They examined whether the bacteria in these products resisted common antibiotics and whether they carried genes that cause antibiotic resistance. A total of 19 different antibiotic resistance genes were found across the products. Bacteria in a pet’s gut can share these resistance genes with harmful bacteria, which can make future infections in pets, and potentially in people, harder to treat.
Enterococcus faecium, a strain clinically proven to treat diarrhea, was the most frequently used probiotic species in pet products. It also carried the highest number of resistance genes and showed a higher potential risk. Some products tested showed resistance to antibiotics used in both veterinary and human medicine.
The bottom line is that probiotics are not automatically safe just because they are natural. This is one reason it may be important to rotate between different probiotic products and strains, and to avoid long-term use of strains like enterococcus faecium to help reduce the risk of spreading antibiotic resistance genes.
The researchers recommend stronger testing requirements for pet probiotics similar to those used for livestock, screening probiotic strains before they reach the market, and avoiding strains that carry resistance genes, especially those that can spread easily.
