Community Q fever epidemics occurred in The Netherlands in 2007-2009, with dairy goat and dairy sheep farms as the implicated source. The aim of the study was to determine the seroprevalence and risk factors for seropositivity in dairy goat farmers and their household members living or working on these farms. Sera of 268 people living or working on 111 dairy goat farms were tested for Coxiella ...

This paper aims to explore how Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can be utilized on dairy farms to enhance total farm management. There is a growing worldwide trend for countries to implement whole-of-life traceability systems for livestock, and RFID is clearly the dominant technology being chosen to achieve this aim. In line with this global trend, and to meet the requirements of key tradi...

Conventional livestock farming provides consumers with cheap and reliable sources of milk and meat. Yet the inevitable by-product, i.e. livestock faecal matter, represents a potential source of pathogenic microorganisms. This paper applies the Faecal Indicator Organisms Costing Assessment Tool (FIOCAT), which was designed as part of the RELU project ‘sustainable and holistic food chains for rec...

Faecal samples were collected from seventy-eight diarrhoeic cow and buffalo calves between November 1998 and February 1999 to study the genomic diversity and prevalence of Rotavirus infection by ribonucleic acid polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (RNA-PAGE) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In the organised dairy farm (where daily production and health records were maintained), the...

Knowledge related to udder health in dairy practice is considerably limited. The aim of the experiment was to study the changes of somatic cell counts (SCC) in milk in relation to the month of year, stage of lactation and parity under the practical conditions. Also the frequency of incidence of high SCC during the year was observed. The effectiveness of dry therapy and calving process on SCC wa...

This study investigated the presence of aflatoxin M1 (AfM1) in dairy cows' milk, given predefined scenarios for milk production, compound feed (CF) contamination with aflatoxin B1 (AfB1), and inclusion rates of ingredients, using Monte Carlo simulation modelling. The model simulated a typical dairy farm in the Netherlands. Six different scenarios were considered, based on two lactation and thre...

Vermont is a new Latino destination where many Spanish-speaking migrants have found work on dairy farms. One hundred twenty Latino workers were surveyed on 59 Vermont dairy farms to develop a demographic profile and evaluate their self-assessed health status and barriers to care. The study found, similar to other studies, the majority of workers were young, male Mexicans. However, the workers i...

To respond to meat safety and quality issues in dairy market cattle, a collaborative project team for 7 western states was established to develop educational resources providing a consistent meat safety and quality message to dairy producers, farm advisors, and veterinarians. The team produced an educational website and CD-ROM course that included videos, narrated slide sets, and on-farm tools....

BACKGROUND Human tuberculosis caused by M. bovis is a zoonosis presently considered sporadic in developed countries, but remains a poorly studied problem in low and middle resource countries. The disease in humans is mainly attributed to unpasteurized dairy products consumption. However, transmission due to exposure of humans to infected animals has been also recognized. The prevalence of tuber...

Livestock is a vital source of methane and nitrous oxide gas which are considered as hazardous greenhouse gas (GHG) causing global warming. This study was conducted to assess GHG emissions from different livestock categories of different (small, medium, large) dairy farming in Bangladesh by using IPCC guideline 2006 and CIGR 2002. The emission rate of CH4, N2O (mainly emits from manure) is incr...