EU-wide baseline survey on the prevalence of Salmonella in holdings with breeding pigs, 2008 - prevalence and factors associated with Salmonella positivity

In order to reduce the incidence of human salmonellosis, European Union (EU) legislation foresees the setting of Salmonella reduction targets for food producing-animals including breeding pigs. To set such a target, an EU-wide baseline survey was conducted in 2008 to determine the prevalence and diversity of Salmonella in holldings with breeding pigs across Member States (MSs)

Epidemiological indicators for meat inspection of farmed game

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Modeling the Spread of Vector-Borne Diseases on Bipartite Networks

BACKGROUND: Vector-borne diseases for which transmission occurs exclusively between vectors and hosts can be modeled as spreading on a bipartite network. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In such models the spreading of the disease strongly depends on the degree distribution of the two classes of nodes. It is sufficient for one of the classes to have a scale-free degree distribution with a slow enough decay for the network to have asymptotically vanishing epidemic threshold. Data on the distribution of Ixodes ricinus ticks on mice and lizards from two independent studies are well described by a scale-free distribution compatible with an asymptotically vanishing epidemic threshold. The commonly used negative binomial, instead, cannot describe the right tail of the empirical distribution. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The extreme aggregation of vectors on hosts, described by the power-law decay of the degree distribution, makes the epidemic threshold decrease with the size of the network and vanish asymptotically

EU-wide baseline survey on the prevalence of Salmonella in holdings with breeding pigs, 2008 - prevalence and factors associated with Salmonella positivity

In order to reduce the incidence of human salmonellosis, European Union (EU) legislation foresees the setting of Salmonella reduction targets for food producing-animals including breeding pigs. To set such a target, an EU-wide baseline survey was conducted in 2008 to determine the prevalence and diversity of Salmonella in holldings with breeding pigs across Member States (MSs).</p

Estimating the Public Health Impact of Setting Targets at the European Level for the Reduction of Zoonotic Salmonella in Certain Poultry Populations

In the European Union (EU), targets are being set for the reduction of certain zoonotic Salmonella serovars in different animal populations, including poultry populations, within the framework of Regulation (EC) No. 2160/2003 on the control of zoonoses. For a three-year transitional period, the EU targets were to cover only Salmonella Enteritidis and S. Typhimurium (and in addition S. Hadar, S. Infantis and S. Virchow for breeding flocks of Gallus gallus). Before the end of that transitional period, the revision of the EU targets was to be considered, including the potentially addition of other serovars with public health significance to the permanent EU targets. This review article aims at providing an overview of the assessments carried out by the Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards of the European Food Safety Authority in the field of setting targets for Salmonella in poultry populations (breeding flocks of Gallus gallus, laying flocks of Gallus gallus, broiler flocks of Gallus gallus and flocks of breeding and fattening turkeys) and their impact in subsequent changes in EU legislation

Distribution of vectors on hosts.

<p>The right tail of the distribution of vectors (larvae and nymphae) on hosts (mice and lizards) is described by a power-law distribution. For each dataset we report: the MLE estimate of the value of above which the data are well described by a power-law; the MLE estimate of the power-law exponent; the P-value of the goodness-of-fit test for the power-law; the MLE estimate of the size of the negative binomial distribution; the P-value of the goodness-of-fit test for the negative binomial; the -statistic and the P-value of the Vuong test comparing the two distributions.</p

The dependence of the Vuong -statistic on the degree threshold for the Slovakia and Tuscany datasets.

<p>Positive (negative) values of imply that the data are better described by the power law (negative binomial) distribution. While the whole distribution is better described by the negative binomial, the power law is a better fit to the large- behavior, which governs the asymptotic behavior of the epidemic threshold.</p

Field data.

<p>Number of mice and lizards examined to determine the distribution of vectors on hosts in the Tuscany dataset.</p

Dependence of the epidemic threshold on the network size for various degree distributions (logarithmic scale on both axes).

<p>The circles represent the epidemic threshold from our simulation, and the lines the predictions obtained with Eq.1. Colors refer to combinations of degree distributions. Blue: Poisson distribution for both hosts and vectors; red: Poisson distribution for vectors, scale-free () for hosts.</p