The present study endeavors to investigate the attitudes, opinions and perceptions of livestock farmers regarding the main problems they face and confine the development of livestock in the Greek region of Evros. Primary data were collected through a quantitative survey (structured questionnaire) with livestock farmers in the region. The analysis of the survey data was carried out with the use ...

This study examines the impact of multiple shocks on assets by employing two waves of a panel data set of 360 rural households in three agro-ecological zones in Kenya. To control for unobserved heterogeneity, a ‘within’ household fixed effects model was employed. One major finding is that climatic shocks negatively affect households’ livestock holdings -apart from small ruminant and non-ruminan...

INTRODUCTION Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonosis primarily affecting ruminants, resulting in epidemic abortions, fever, nasal and ocular discharges, haemorrhagic diarrhoea, and a high mortality rate among young animals. Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is an arthropod-borne RNA virus occurring in epizootic periods associated with heavy rainfall. The last outbreak of RVF in Tanzania was in 2006-...

BACKGROUND A mixed methods study was undertaken in the Kachia Grazing Reserve of northern Nigeria. Surveys in March, June and October 2011 included focus group discussions, key informant and in-depth household interviews, concerning livelihood practices, animal health, ownership, and productivity. In May 2011, 249 Fulani families fleeing post-election violence entered the reserve with their liv...

BACKGROUND: Giardia lamblia is the most frequently identified human intestinal parasite in Canada with prevalence estimates of 4-10%. However, infection rates vary by geographical area and localized 'pockets' of high or low infection rates are thought to exist. Water-borne transmission is one of the major routes of infection. Sources of contamination of drinking water include humans, domestic a...

In this report, we present a series of empirical techniques to examine linkage between livestock and livelihood, using data from Senegal, a West African economy with high levels of smallholder poverty and livestock dependence. Our results for this country show that livestock dependent populations are more likely to be poor and the severity of their poverty is greater, yet the same reliance on l...

Because of an increasing demand for animal-source foods, an increasing desire to reduce poverty and an increasing need to reduce the environmental impact of livestock production, tropical farming systems with livestock must increase their productivity. An important share of the global human and livestock populations are found within smallholder mixed-crop-livestock systems, which should, theref...

UNLABELLED Since its discovery in the early 2000s, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clonal complex 398 (CC398) has become a rapidly emerging cause of human infections, most often associated with livestock exposure. We applied whole-genome sequence typing to characterize a diverse collection of CC398 isolates (n = 89), including MRSA and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA)...