Phage therapy, the therapeutic use of bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections, is a potential alternative to antibiotics. After having been extensively use and developed mainly in former Soviet Union countries for about 90 years, phage therapies are now being tested elsewhere, including the United States, for treatment of a variety of bacterial and poly-microbial biofilm infections. Phage therapy has many potential applications in human medicine as well as dentistry, veterinary science, and agriculture. If the target host of a phage therapy treatment is not an animal, however, then the term "biocontrol" (as in phage-mediated biocontrol of bacteria) is sometimes employed rather than "phage therapy".