Does Antibiotic Medicine Given to Cows Have a Profound Effect on the Yogurt Produced?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of my experiment was to determine if the anti-biotic medicine given to cows can have an effect on the yogurt produced. Methods/Materials I used two containers of culture certified organic yogurt, and two containers of culture certified non-organic yogurt. Organic yogurt is produced by cows that are not given anti-biotic medicine, while non-organic yogurt is produced by cows given heavy doses of anti-biotic medicine. I used regular soy-agar in standard sterile Petri dishes. I prepared a 10x dilution, and a 100x dilution, for both the organic and non-organic yogurt, and incubated them at 37 C for six days. Results I found that the organic yogurt significantly clouded the Petri dish indicating strong bacteria growth. I could hardly observe any growth in the agar with the diluted non-organic yogurt. This was consistent with both 10x and 100x dilutions. I concluded that my hypothesis was correct, and Lactobacillus bacteria was more present in organic yogurt than in non-organic yogurt Conclusions/Discussion Since Lactobacillus bacteria assists with digestion, these results could mean that it is healthier for most people to eat organic yogurt. It is also interesting that anti-biotic medicines, which according to the USDA are frequently given to non-organically raised cows, could have an adverse affect on the quality of the food produced. It is possible that the reason for the absence of bacteria in non-organic yogurt is due to anti-biotic residue in the yogurt itself.

Competition history

• CSEF 2007 Microbiology · Entry J1414

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Microbiology projects
• CSEF Microbiology projects
• Every CSEF 2007 project