Intensification and specialisation of agriculture in developed countries enabled productivity to be improved but had detrimental impacts on the environment and threatened the economic viability of a huge number of farms. The combination of livestock and crops, which was very common in the past, is assumed to be a viable alternative to specialised livestock or cropping systems. Mixed crop-livest...

OBJECTIVE We evaluated the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance in enterococci from animal farms and the potential relation of resistance to antimicrobial use. METHODS Enterococci from faecal samples from 18 beef cattle, 18 dairy cattle, 18 swine, 13 chicken, and eight turkey farms were prospectively evaluated over a 6 year period from 1998 to 2003. RESULTS We evaluated 1256 isolates of...

Background and Objective: Milk is a completely rich and complex environment suitable for different microorganisms including bacteria and Fungi. The majority of studies were conducted on milk-bacterial flora and aflatoxin-contaminations in dairy products; however, despite the importance of yeasts in usage as starter in the dairy industries and their effect on the taste of dairy products as well ...

The behavior of groups of housed, lactating dairy cattle was observed over 2 winter housing periods on 20 organic farms and 20 conventional farms in the United Kingdom. Three methods were used: (1) 6 video-clips of 10 min duration were captured of cows feeding at sections of the feed-bunk face during the peak feeding period (0 to 90 min) and continuously observed for aggressive interactions amo...

While some research finds that environmental regulation of hog production reduces output by small farms, other work finds that large farms downsize to avoid regulation. None consider the potential size-bias of regulation. We show theoretically that when size-based regulations are also size-biased, large farms downsize, expand, or do neither depending on how regulations shift their marginal prod...

Anthelmintic resistance has been increasingly reported in cattle worldwide over the last decade, although reports from Europe are more limited. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of injectable formulations of ivermectin and moxidectin at 0.2 mg per kg bodyweight against naturally acquired gastro-intestinal nematodes in cattle. A total of 753 animals on 40 farms were...

BACKGROUND Air pollution has been shown to increase the susceptibility to community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Previously, we observed an increased incidence of CAP in adults living within 1 km from poultry farms, potentially related to particulate matter and endotoxin emissions. We aim to confirm the increased risk of CAP near poultry farms by refined spatial analyses, and we hypothesize that t...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a causative agent for hepatitis. HEV is transmitted via the fecal-oral route through contaminated drinking water and induces zoonotic infections through eating uncooked and undercooked meat of deer, wild boar, and swine. In Japan, genotypes 3 (G3) and 4 (G4) are prevalent in domestic swine. Here, we examined the genetic variation among HEVs derived from swine fecal sa...

China's dairy farm structure has experienced fundamental changes across farm types. As the number of backyard farms has dramatically declined, the share of dairy cows from backyard farms has decreased by 22.4% from 2003 to 2008. However, the herd numbers of larger dairy farms have increased. In particular, the share of dairy cows has risen by 18.8% on small farms, by 22.2% on medium farms, and ...

On 15 Swiss poultry farms, broiler flocks, other farm animals, and the environment were examined during consecutive rearing periods to investigate the occurrence and genetic diversity of Campylobacter. Of the 5154 collected samples, 311 (6%) from 14 farms were Campylobacter positive by culture. Amongst the positive samples, 228 tested positive for Campylobacter jejuni and 92 for Campylobacter c...