The level of compliance with livestock welfare requirements is directly reflected in animal health, behaviour, and performance as well as farm profitability. It is mandatory to keep animals in ...conditions that prevent suffering and that respect animal needs in terms of biology and ethology. Compliance with these obligations in the Czech Republic is supervised by the State Veterinary Administration (SVA) through inspectors affiliated to the veterinary administrations at the regional level. The aim of the study was to identify the main deficiencies observed during official site visits carried out at livestock holdings in 2016–2020 and to assess the trend of the most frequently occurring deficiencies during the reference period. Data obtained from Central Veterinary Administration of the SVA containing a total of 9,147 records of partial welfare checks were subjected to the analysis. The percentage of site visits where deficiencies were found at livestock holdings was 15.04%. When analysed in more detail, the results revealed a significantly ( P < 0.05) highest frequency of violations with respect to administration and animal marking (2,054) followed by the provision of treatment and spatial conditions. The trend analysis showed no significant increase or decrease in the frequency of violations in the selected areas during the reference period ( P > 0.05). The results show the need to focus on compliance with duties in the framework of administration and animal marking, provision of treatment, and provision of animal management standards, especially in terms of spatial conditions, nutrition, and animal hygiene where violations were consistently found most often.
The incidence of kidney damage in livestock was monitored in the Czech slaughterhouses from 2010 to 2021. The results showed that the incidence of kidney damage was lower in all monitored species (
P
...< 0.05) in fattened animals compared to adult ones. In cattle and pigs, the incidence of kidney damage was lower (
P
< 0.01) in fattened animals (bulls, finisher pigs) than in culled young (calves, piglets). When comparing individual categories of adult animals, the lowest incidence of kidney damage was found in does and ewes (2.68% and 3.01%, respectively), then in sows (28.45%), and the highest was in cows (40.46%). Among fattened animals, the incidence of findings in kidneys was increasing in the order of kids (0.21%), lambs (0.42%), bulls (10.46%) and finisher pigs (14.42%). Findings of chronic kidney damage were more frequent than findings of acute (
P
< 0.01) and parasitic (
P
< 0.01) origin in all observed categories of animals. The results show that, from the point of view of the incidence of kidney damage as a major consequence of imbalance between the organism’s metabolic needs and the nutrition provided to the animals, there are deficiencies of a significant level, which prove that there is still significant room for further optimization of the nutrition of individual categories of animals, that would take into account not only performance, overall clinical health, but also subclinical animal health, leading to a reduction in the incidence of kidney damage detected in animals at slaughter.
Livestock movements are a common pathway for the spread infectious diseases in a population. An understanding of livestock movement patterns is needed to understand national transmission risks of ...highly infectious diseases during epidemics. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is an approach that helps to describe the relationships among individuals and the implications of those relationships. We used SNA to describe the contact structure of livestock movements throughout the contiguous U.S. from April 1st, 2015 to March 31st, 2016. We describe 4 network types: beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine, and small ruminant. Livestock movement data were sourced from Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (ICVI) while county-level farm demographic data were from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). In the described networks, nodes are represented by counties and arcs by shipments between nodes; the networks were weighted based on the number of shipments between nodes. For the analyses, movement data were aggregated at the county level and on an annual basis. Measures of centrality and cohesiveness were computed and identification of trade-communities in all networks was conducted. During the study period, a total of 219,042 movements were recorded and beef cattle movements accounted for 63 % of all movements. At least 70 % of U.S. counties were present in each of the networks, but the density of arcs was less than 2% in all networks. In the beef cattle network, counties with high out-degree were strongly correlated (0.8) with the number of beef cows per county while for the dairy cattle network a strong correlation (>0.86) was found with the number of dairy cattle per km2 at the county level. All networks were found to have between 4 and 6 large communities (50 counties or more per community), and were geographically clustered except for the communities in the small ruminant network. Outputs reported in these analyses can help to understand the structure of the contact networks for beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine, and small ruminants. They may also be used in conjunction with simulation modeling to evaluate spread of highly infectious disease such as foot-and-mouth disease at the national level and to evaluate the application of intervention strategies.
Meat cattle breeding should develop in Ukraine as a priority and independent industry to meet beef needs. The meat industry has enormous potential and, as the most promising and attractive, will take ...a dominant place in the structure of the domestic food industry in the coming years. Beef is one of the most essential elements of the human diet. It contains complete proteins and animal fats, biologically active substances, mineral elements, and vitamins. The most important feature of food products is their quality and safety indicators, that is, the absence of substances harmful to the consumer's health and pathogens of infectious and invasive diseases. In this regard, veterinary and sanitary expertise and product safety control are of particular importance, as they are necessary to ensure the health of the population of Ukraine. Improving the quality of meat and meat products is a primary task in modern conditions. The implementation of this task depends not only on agricultural but also on processing enterprises. The article presents materials on the study of critical indicators of the safety and quality of beef. The study was carried out as part of the research work of the Department of Normal and Pathological Morphology, hygiene, and Expertise: “Monitoring the content of toxic substances in drinking water, feed and their impact on the body of cattle and the quality and safety of products”, state registration number – 0120U101318. The material for the research was the slaughter products of domestic animals, such as cattle, which were supplied to enterprises in the city of Zhytomyr. Pre-slaughter inspection and veterinary-sanitary examination of carcasses and their slaughter products of cattle was carried out following the “Rules of pre-slaughter veterinary examination of animals and veterinary-sanitary examination of meat and meat products”. The study aims to determine the safety and quality indicators of beef obtained in the conditions of meat processing enterprises of the Zhytomyr region. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive survey of beef safety and quality indicators was conducted. As a result of the tests, it was established that the pH level of the meat was 5.7–6.1. Carrying out the reaction with a 5 % solution of CuSO4 in the broth showed that the broth was transparent. A positive response to peroxidase was also detected. The safety parameters corresponded to regulatory documents. Careful control of the safety and quality of beef at every stage of production, starting from the rearing of animals and up to the sale of the product, guarantees a high degree of consumer protection.
The food safety warranty is a fundamental principle of international trade. Veterinary inspection is the process that allows countries to meet trade obligations and access to the international ...markets by ensuring that food safety and animal health control are effective and trustworthy. Brazil and the United States (US) are the major players in the world’s meat marketing industry. The Brazilian Federal Inspection Service (SIF) and the US Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) are responsible for food inspection services guidelines in these two countries. The objectives of this overview were to compare and highlight the similarities and differences between SIF and FSIS, to address the challenges of which Brazilian Food Inspection Service faces due to the rapidly growing demand by the livestock sector for Veterinary Services, and provide recommendations to improve the Brazilian food inspection services. Government regulations and local news were examined to provide information for this paper. FSIS is an agency under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), with their own governance and budget. In contrast, the SIF is not an independent agency, but is a department within the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA). It has technical governance, but no separate budget or legal independence. The US establishments for production, processing and distribution of food of animal origin have the option to apply for Federal inspection or State inspection under the “at least equal to” (Federal) requirements policy. In Brazil the industry players have the option to apply for Federal, State or Municipal inspection, and there is no mandatory compliance with Federal requirements. The FSIS hiring system is continuous and straightforward, whereas the hiring system for all public servants in Brazil is conducted through a general entrance examination and is subject to the approval of high-ranking government. The challenges of the Brazilian food inspection services are discussed and recommendations to improve the service are presented.
•A comparison between the Brazilian and US Food Inspection Services.•The food safety and inspection services in Brazil and US have similar mandatory functions.•The uniformity in inspection standards in Brazil is hampered by absence of the mandatory ‘at least equal’ policy in the US.•The hiring system in the US Food Inspection services is more efficient than in Brazil.•Suggestions to improve the Brazilian Food Inspection Services were presented.
Risk-based sampling is an essential component of livestock health surveillance because it targets resources towards sub-populations with a higher risk of infection. Risk-based surveillance in U.S. ...livestock is limited because the locations of high-risk herds are often unknown and data to identify high-risk herds based on shipments are often unavailable. In this study, we use a novel, data-driven network model for the shipments of cattle in the U.S. (the U.S. Animal Movement Model, USAMM) to provide surveillance suggestions for cattle imported into the U.S. from Mexico. We describe the volume and locations where cattle are imported and analyze their predicted shipment patterns to identify counties that are most likely to receive shipments of imported cattle. Our results suggest that most imported cattle are sent to relatively few counties. Surveillance at 10 counties is predicted to sample 22–34% of imported cattle while surveillance at 50 counties is predicted to sample 43%–61% of imported cattle. These findings are based on the assumption that USAMM accurately describes the shipments of imported cattle because their shipments are not tracked separately from the remainder of the U.S. herd. However, we analyze two additional datasets – Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection and brand inspection data – to ensure that the characteristics of potential post-import shipments do not change on an annual scale and are not dependent on the dataset informing our analyses. Overall, these results highlight the utility of USAMM to inform targeted surveillance strategies when complete shipment information is unavailable.
Display omitted
The application of network analysis to cattle shipments broadens our understanding of shipment patterns beyond pairwise interactions to the network as a whole. Such a quantitative ...description of cattle shipments in the U.S. can identify trade communities, describe temporal shipment patterns, and inform the design of disease surveillance and control strategies. Here, we analyze a longitudinal dataset of beef and dairy cattle shipments from 2009 to 2011 in the United States to characterize communities within the broader cattle shipment network, which are groups of counties that ship mostly to each other. Because shipments occur over time, we aggregate the data at various temporal scales to examine the consistency of network and community structure over time. Our results identified nine large (>50 counties) communities based on shipments of beef cattle in 2009 aggregated into an annual network and nine large communities based on shipments of dairy cattle. The size and connectance of the shipment network was highly dynamic; monthly networks were smaller than yearly networks and revealed seasonal shipment patterns consistent across years. Comparison of the shipment network over time showed largely consistent shipping patterns, such that communities identified on annual networks of beef and diary shipments from 2009 still represented 41–95% of shipments in monthly networks from 2009 and 41–66% of shipments from networks in 2010 and 2011. The temporal aspects of cattle shipments suggest that future applications of the U.S. cattle shipment network should consider seasonal shipment patterns. However, the consistent within-community shipping patterns indicate that yearly communities could provide a reasonable way to group regions for management.
PDF
