Vitamin E benefits cattle, too
Low-level infections in cattle can slow the animals’ growth and stress their immune systems. That’s why farmers often feed animals small amounts of antibiotics. But such chronic antibiotic use can speed the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which then may end up infecting people.
One alternative to antibiotics is to prime a calf’s immune system with vitamin E, says Ted Elsasser of the Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md.
He and his colleagues pretreated six calves with vitamin E before challenging them with a toxin taken from bacterial cell walls. The toxin revs up the calves’ immune systems as if they were facing an infection. The researchers also gave six calves the toxin alone and four neither the vitamin nor the toxin. Vitamin E, an antioxidant, counters some biologically harmful compounds.