BACKGROUND About 1.4 million Salmonella infections, a common food-borne illness, occur in the U.S. annually; the elderly (aged 65 or above) are most susceptible. In 1997, the USDA introduced the Pathogen Reduction and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points Systems (PR/HACCP) which demands regular Salmonella testing in various establishments processing meat products, such as broiler chicken...

Campylobacter is the leading cause of bacterial diarrhoeal disease worldwide, with raw and undercooked poultry meat and products the primary source of infection. Colonization of broiler chicken flocks with Campylobacter has proved difficult to prevent, even with high levels of biosecurity. Dipteran flies are proven carriers of Campylobacter and their ingress into broiler houses may contribute t...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the biological and genetic characterization of persistent Salmonella isolates in an integrated broiler chicken operation, in an attempt to elucidate the source of contamination. From the breeder farm, the hatchery, the broiler farm and the chicken slaughter house of an integrated broiler chicken operation, a total of 6 serotypes were observed. Althou...

Over the last centuries, Western diets acquired a dramatic imbalance in the ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) to saturated fatty acids (SFA) with a concomitant reduction in the dietary proportion of n-3 PUFA. Pastures are a good source of n-3 fatty acids, although the effect of forage intake in the fatty acid profile of meat from free-range chicken remains to be evaluated. In addition...

Agriculture provides excellent model systems for understanding how selective pressure, as applied by humans, can affect the genomes of plants and animals. One such system is modern poultry breeding in which intensive genetic selection has been applied for meat production in the domesticated chicken. As a result, modern meat-type chickens (broilers) exhibit enhanced growth, especially of the ske...

shiga toxin-producing escherichia coli (stec) are food-borne pathogens primarily associated with the consumption of contaminated ground beef and are an important food safety concern worldwide. stec has been found to produce a family of related cytotoxins known as shiga toxins (stxs). shiga toxins have been classified into two major classes, stx1 and stx2. a single strains of stec can produce st...

In this study the effects of L-lysine hydrochloride (containing 78.8% available lysine as crystalline lysine) and L-lysine sulfate (containing 51% available lysine in bacterial cell mass) as source of supplemental lysine in broiler chickens was assessed. The basal diet was supplemented with either L-lysine hydrochloride or L-lysine sulfate to meet lysine requirement. Lysine supplementation irre...

Broiler (meat) chickens have been subjected to intense genetic selection. In the past 50 years, broiler growth rates have increased by over 300% (from 25 g per day to 100 g per day). There is growing societal concern that many broiler chickens have impaired locomotion or are even unable to walk. Here we present the results of a comprehensive survey of commercial flocks which quantifies the risk...

Interactions between many vitamins have been reported which can influence the course of metabolic abnormalities and deficiency conditions. However, few instances of interrelationships between biotin and other B-vitamins have been reported. In an earlier experiment to demonstrate the involvement of vitamins in fatty liver and kidney syndrome (FLKS) Whitehead et al. (1976) found that, although bi...

In 2003, Brazil was recognized as a pathogenic Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) strain-free country for commercial poultry. This research was conducted in Brazil between December 2003 and March 2005 to verify the maintenance of this virulent NDV-free status. Serum samples from 5,455 flocks for commercial poultry farms were collected, comprising 81,825 broiler chickens. The farms were located in ni...