Compared to the other food producing animals, probably
because of the high incidence of enteric disorders, the rabbits
raised in the intensive production system have the highest
consumption of antibiotics (French Agency for Food, Environmen-
tal and Occupational Health & Safety, 2012). Data on antimicrobial
exposure of the rabbit
flocks enrolled in this study are not
available, but in an ongoing
five years survey, involving 32 Italian
industrial rabbit farms, we found a mean consumption of
antimicrobial per year which is three times higher the consumption
reported in the French study mentioned above. Such large
amount of antimicrobials, mostly administered in feed or water,
exposes rabbits to both risk of CDI and colonization with resistant
clones of C. difficile. In our study, the majority (82%) of tested
C. difficile displayed a reduced susceptibility to at least one
antimicrobial and 18% to three antimicrobials, these
figures may
hide a worst scenario as we tested only six antimicrobials