Tag Archives: Cattle

Pathogenic potential to humans of bovine Escherichia coli O26, Scotland

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Chase-Topping et al. report in the current issue of Emerging Infectious Disease that Escherichia coli O26 and O157 have similar overall prevalences in cattle in Scotland, but in humans, Shiga toxin–producing E. coli O26 infections are fewer and clinically less severe than E. coli O157 infections.

To investigate this discrepancy, we genotyped E. coli O26 isolates from cattle and humans in Scotland and continental Europe. The genetic background of some strains from Scotland was closely related to that of strains causing severe infections in Europe. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling found an association between hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and multilocus sequence type 21 strains and confirmed the role of stx2 in severe human disease. Although the prevalences of E. coli O26 and O157 on cattle farms in Scotland are equivalent, prevalence of more virulent strains is low, reducing human infection risk.

However, new data on E. coli O26–associated HUS in humans highlight the need for surveillance of non-O157 enterohemorrhagic E. coli and for understanding stx2 phage acquisition.

The complete report is available at http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/11-1236_article.htm.

Campylobacter increase in Wyoming; any relation to Arizona?

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The Wyoming Department of Health is reporting a four-fold increase statewide in Campylobacter infections this summer, with at least 29 people sickened and six hospitalized. Nearly three-quarters of the patients are male.

"While the increase in these infections appears to be sporadic with no single common source, it’s clear that animal-related illness is at least partially driving the increase," said Kelly Weidenbach, epidemiologist with the department’s Infectious Disease Epidemiology Program.

In rare cases people may develop serious complications such as Guillain-Barré syndrome. The syndrome occurs when the immune system is triggered to attack the body’s nerves. It can lead to paralysis and usually requires intensive care.

Public health officials attempt to interview each person with the Campylobacter infection. Among patients interviewed to date, exposure to animals, especially cattle and dogs, has been common.

"In many cases, the animals were noted to be ill with diarrhea when the person had contact with them," Weidenbach said. "Several have been ranchers or individuals who recently attended a cattle branding and who were accidentally exposed to fecal material."

That sounds different from the Arizona campylobacter increase. But who knows.
 

Stricken with E. coli, girl fighting

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A 5-year-old girl remains hospitalized in the Louisiana Health Sciences Center-Shreveport’s pediatric intensive care unit more than two weeks after contracting E. coli O157 while attending a party in Richland Parish.

Tom Sumrall, the girl’s grandfather, said as many as 15 children were sickened following an end-of-the-year Ouachita Christian School party last month on a farm between Start and Rayville.

OCS headmaster Bobby Stokes said the party was not put on by the school.

At least three children were hospitalized. A young boy was released from a Jackson, Miss., hospital last week and a young girl was released from LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport Thursday, Sumrall said.

Dr. Shelley Jones, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals Region 8 director, suspects the children contracted the E. coli while playing in a mud pit. It was likely transmitted from the infected fecal matter of a cow.

"We do know based on preliminary analysis that the children who played in the mud pit more than five minutes were more likely to have symptoms," Jones said.

"But the state lab is unable to do environmental testing, so we’re probably not going to know definitively."

John Cooper, the 5-year-old girl’s father, said his daughter remains on dialysis and was just removed from a venilator on Thursday. Cooper said both of his daughter’s lungs collapsed.

Dodd defends: E. coli and salmonella in cattle production

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Chuck Dodd looked fairly snappy as he defended his PhD (below, left) today – to go with his MS and DVM – but he spent much of the past three years (right), knee deep in cow poop.

Chuck’s thesis was entitled, Epidemiology of Salmonella and E. coli O157 in Beef Cattle Production Systems and included four interrelated studies:

• effects of Salmonella Newport SRP® vaccine;
• prevalence and persistence of Salmonella;
• relatedness of E. coli O157 in feces and on carcasses; and,
• a simulation model for E. coli O157 interventions.

During his defense, Chuck said he learned “you can’t test or inspect your way to food safety. It’s the entire system.”

Good for him, and best wishes. When he finally washes out the cow smell, Chuck’s off to the Landstufl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Lowering loads: food safety starts on the farm

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Every time some government type says there are more cases of E. coli O157:H7 and other dangerous bacteria in the summertime because people barbeque more, I cringe. It’s one of those blame-the-consumer comments when the reality is more complicated. 

Most food safety interventions are designed to reduce or eliminate pathogen loads – to lower the number of harmful bugs from farm-to-fork. A piece of highly-contaminated meat can wreck cross-contamination havoc in a food service or home kitchen.

Elizabeth Weise writes in USA Today today that animals carry higher levels of E. coli O157:H7 and friends during the summer months, and summarizes efforts to lower bacterial loads on animals entering slaughter plants.

Jerold Mande, USDA deputy undersecretary for food safety, said last month,

"To take the next big step forward on food safety, we need to do more to have fewer pathogens on food animals when they arrive at the slaughterhouse gate.”

Jim Marsden of Kansas State University said that microbiologically, the biggest "bang for the buck" is cleaning the bacteria off the hide or the carcass to keep it from coming into contact with the meat.

Weise writes that a number of possible interventions are in the works. Each, it is hoped, might take down the incidence of E. coli O157:H7 by a factor of 100. Below is the edited list.

Vaccines: Gut warfare

Probably the most hopeful are vaccines that lower the amount of O157:H7 in cattle’s guts. Two are furthest along, one from a Minnesota company called Epitopix and one by a Canadian company called Bioniche Life Sciences. Epitopix’s vaccine has received preliminary approval from the USDA and is being tested in the USA. Bioniche’s vaccine was approved in Canada last year and is in the approval process in the USA. In addition, scientists at the USDA’s National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, have developed two more vaccines.

Field trials of the Epitopix vaccine showed that 86% of vaccinated cattle stopped shedding O157:H7 bacteria in their feces. Of those that still were shedding bacteria, there was a 98% reduction in the amount, says Daniel Thomson (left, photo from USA Today), a veterinarian and professor of Production Medicine at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., who has studied the effectiveness of vaccine for the company.

The issue for cattlemen will be the costs of the two or three shots necessary to create immunity and the wear and tear on the cattle caused by bringing them in to be vaccinated. Going through the chute that holds them still while they’re given the shot, necessary to safeguard workers, can cause some cattle to become agitated.

Phages: A spray of bacteria fighters

Cattle walking through a car-wash-like spray of bacteria-eating viruses called phages sounds more science fiction than feedlot, but it’s actually in use across the USA. In cattle, a phage that is specific to E. coli O157:H7 is sprayed on the animals one to four hours before they’re slaughtered. "They like to have them soak," says Dan Schaefer, director of beef research and development at in Wichita. Cargill is testing the spray at one of its plants.

Probiotics: ‘Exclusion’ cultures

Basically these are bacterial cultures much like those in yogurt, given to cattle in their feed. They’re called "competitive exclusion" cultures because they out-compete the bad bacteria and exclude them in the animals’ guts. Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia in Griffin, spent years investigating them.

One for E. coli O157:H7 "worked really well for a while and then it stopped working for a while," he says. Doses required are often higher than those claimed by the companies that sell them, he says. Currently these aren’t approved by USDA or FDA as E. coli reduction methods, so the companies that market them can’t make any specific claims for them.

Sodium chlorate: A ‘suicide pill’

This chemical is used in part to do environmentally safe paper bleaching. But administered in extremely small amounts, it also plays a deadly trick on E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella.

In the oxygen-free environment of a cow’s gut, these bacteria are able to obtain energy from nitrogen. But they can’t tell the difference between nitrogen and chlorate, so if there’s chlorate present, they try to use that. This turns the chlorate into bleach, killing the bacteria from the inside without harming the animal.

Grain vs. high-quality hay

Research in Texas, Kansas and Idaho has shown that switching cattle from grain to a more expensive diet of high quality hay before slaughter may lower E. coli O157:H7 rates, though the findings have not always been consistent.

From an epidemiologic standpoint, it’s clear that these pre-slaughter interventions lower the E. coli O157:H7 burden in the cattle, says Guy Loneragan, a professor of animal science and expert in O157:H7 in cattle at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas.

The question is whether investing money on the ranch and feedlot will save money at the packing plant.

Why the Internet still needs reporters who ask the right questions

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If it wasn’t for my friend and journalist, Jim Romahn (right, exactly as shown), I probably would have stopped the food safety gig 10 years ago and went off to play bad banjo in a bluegrass band, or bad goalie in a 15th tier semi-pro hockey league, or become a greeter at Wal-Mart.

By about 1999, I’d gotten bored of hearing myself talk. There’s lots of prof types who make careers out of recycling, but after publishing a book, Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk, and going on the academic circuit, I was really bored with myself.

Jim, who’s been the premier agriculture and food reporter in Canada for about as long as I’ve been alive and used to write speeches for Canadian Minister of Agriculture, Eugene Whelan (the dude in the green Stetson), gave me some advice:

“’Gene used to tell me, when you’ve been on every radio station, when you’ve talked to every local ag meeting, when you can’t stand to hear yourself say the same thing again, that’s when people are just starting to listen. So get over yourself.”

Or that’s about as close as I remember the tale. And it’s one reason why I still do food safety stuff.

Jim sent me a story that ran yesterday, that beautifully demonstrates why the Internet still needs real investigative journalists to provide analysis, rather than just stick their names on press releases: the later is not journalism, it’s promotion and redistribution using electronic toys.

Jim reported that,

“Canada’s reputation for dairy genetics has taken a huge hit because of the massive fraud perpetrated by trusted veterinarian Dr. Brian Hill and his Maple Hill Embryos Inc. of Woodstock, Ont.

He shipped more than six thousand embryos each to China and Russia under false documentation, and more thousands to the Ukraine and Cyprus.

He took embryos from scores of Ontario’s leading Holstein and Jersey breeders, but the lawyers involved in the case decided they couldn’t easily prove theft.

They could prove massive fraud. In some cases, Hill falsified the breeding slips for artificial insemination, the identity of the dam, the breeding date and the embryo recovery date and health certificates.

Some of these frauds were so blatant that a novice ought to have noticed, such as embryo recoveries from one donor cow two weeks apart and recoveries of 18 embryos per collection when the average is seven.

The Chinese set high standards for what they wanted to buy from Hill. In fact, he identified only six cows that qualified, yet shipped them more than 6,000 embryos all collected within a year.

It’s one thing for Hill to cheat this way.

It’s another for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to be so asleep at the switch that it never noticed.

Its veterinarians signed the paperwork clearing the embryo exports. Its veterinarians failed to notice collection dates two weeks apart for the same donor cow. Its veterinarians failed to notice Hill apparently collected more than 6,000 embryos from six cows within less than a year.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is supposed to audit registered embryo collection centres. Hill had one of those, yet the property owner said he never saw Hill, let alone government inspectors, at the place."

Audits really don’t mean much, for food safety, or cattle sperm. Thanks, Jim, for helping me get over myself, and moving on.

Killer cows

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Cows can be dangerous.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported last week that from 2003-2007, cattle were the primary or secondary cause of death for 108 people.

During the same period, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska accounted for 16% of the nation’s approximately 985,000 cattle operations and 21% of the nation’s cattle and calf herd.

To better characterize cattle-caused deaths in these four states, investigators reviewed all such deaths occurring during the period 2003–2008 that were detected by two surveillance programs, the Iowa Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (IA FACE) and the Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health (GPCAH). This report summarizes that investigation, which identified 21 cattle-related deaths. These deaths occurred throughout the year, and decedents tended to be older (aged ≥60 years) (67%) and male (95%). Except in one case, the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head or chest. Circumstances associated with these deaths included working with cattle in enclosed areas (33%), moving or herding cattle (24%), loading (14%), and feeding (14%). One third of the deaths were caused by animals that had previously exhibited aggressive behavior.

To reduce the risk for death from cattle-caused injuries, farmers and ranchers should be aware of and follow recommended practices for safe livestock-handling facilities and proper precautions for working with cattle, especially cattle that have exhibited aggressiveness.

E. coli O157:H7 and cattle diet – it’s messy

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“If only” is often how statements begin by food safety wannabes who are sure they have stumbled upon a vast conspiracy meant to subjugate society.

If only Monsanto didn’t genetically-engineer seeds …

If only products like milk were served raw and natural …

If only cattle were fed grass, there would be no E. coli O157:H7.

When someone makes such proclamations, or says they speak fact, usually with an air of authority, I immediately think that person is full of it. People who say “trust me” are immediately untrustworthy.

Megan Jacob, Todd Callaway, and T.G. Nagaraja of Kansas State University write about the dietary interactions and interventions affecting Escherichia coli O157 colonization and shedding in cattle in an upcoming issue of Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. It’s not a movie, not a blog, not a pulp fiction, so they sorta have to get it right. And they do, when they write:

“The specific mechanisms responsible for increased or decreased E. coli O157 shedding or survival are not known … results of studies are conflicting or not repeatable, which speaks to the complexity of the hindgut ecosystem, variation in animal feed utilization, and variation within feed products.”

The complete abstract is below.

Escherichia coli O157 is an important foodborne pathogen affecting human health and the beef cattle industry. Contamination of carcasses at slaughter is correlated to the prevalence of E. coli O157 in cattle feces. Many associations have been made between dietary factors and E. coli O157 prevalence in cattle feces. Preharvest interventions, such as diet management, could reduce the fecal prevalence and diminish the impact of this adulterant. Dietary influences, including grain type and processing method, forage quality, and distillers grains have all been associated with E. coli O157 prevalence. In addition, several plant compounds, including phenolic acids and essential oils, have been proposed as in-feed intervention strategies. The specific mechanisms responsible for increased or decreased E. coli O157 shedding or survival are not known but are often attributed to changes in hindgut ecology induced by diet types. Some interventions may have a direct bacterial effect. Frequently, results of studies are conflicting or not repeatable, which speaks to the complexity of the hindgut ecosystem, variation in animal feed utilization, and variation within feed products. Still, understanding specific mechanisms, driven by diet influences, responsible for E. coli O157 shedding will aid in the development and implementation of better and practical preharvest intervention strategies.

E. coli cases from Denver Stock Show reach 23

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The Denver Department of Health says three more cases of E. coli have been discovered in the past week in an outbreak believed to have started at the National Western Stock Show, bringing the total number of cases to 23.

Many of the cases are in children along the Front Range, from Boulder to El Paso County.

Several of the sick children go to day care and at least two of the cases appear to have happened after ill children came into contact with other sick children, according to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE).

It is unclear how the E. coli first spread at the Stock Show.