Livestock trade networks for guiding animal health surveillance

BACKGROUND: Trade in live animals can contribute to the introduction of exotic diseases, the maintenance and spread endemic diseases. Annually millions of animals are moved across Europe for the purposes of breeding, fattening and slaughter. Data on the number of animals moved were obtained from the Directorate General Sanco (DG Sanco) for 2011. These were converted to livestock units to enable direct comparison across species and their movements were mapped, used to calculate the indegrees and outdegrees of 27 European countries and the density and transitivity of movements within Europe. This provided the opportunity to discuss surveillance of European livestock movement taking into account stopping points en-route. RESULTS: High density and transitivity of movement for registered equines, breeding and fattening cattle, breeding poultry and pigs for breeding, fattening and slaughter indicates that hazards have the potential to spread quickly within these populations. This is of concern to highly connected countries particularly those where imported animals constitute a large proportion of their national livestock populations, and have a high indegree. The transport of poultry (older than 72 hours) and unweaned animals would require more rest breaks than the movement of weaned animals, which may provide more opportunities for disease transmission. Transitivity is greatest for animals transported for breeding purposes with cattle, pigs and poultry having values of over 50%. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrated that some species (pigs and poultry) are traded much more frequently and at a larger scale than species such as goats. Some countries are more vulnerable than others due to importing animals from many countries, having imported animals requiring rest-breaks and importing large proportions of their national herd or flock. Such knowledge about the vulnerability of different livestock systems related to trade movements can be used to inform the design of animal health surveillance systems to facilitate the trade in animals between European member states. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0354-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Determination of polymer additive residues that migrate from coffee capsules by means of stir bar sorptive extraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and PARAFAC decomposition

This paper reports on the difficulties encountered when developing an analytical method for ultra-trace determination, in a complex matrix, of plastic additive residues which are ubiquitous in the laboratory. The simultaneous qualitative and quantitative determination of an antioxidant (2,6-di-tert-butyl-4-methyl-phenol, BHT), an UV stabilizer (benzophenone, BP), and a plasticizer (diisobutyl phthalate, DiBP), released from plastic capsules is carried out in coffee by means of GC–MS and parallel factor analysis decomposition. Stir bar sorptive extraction is used to extract and concentrate the analytes. Coffee samples are prepared with Milli-Q water, which contains residues of the target compounds, which can be significant for ultra-trace analysis and should be subtracted. In addition, matrix effect exits in coffee, so standard addition method is used. The residue concentrations released from the coffee capsules into the solid coffee are around 3, 1, and 12 μg kg−1 of BHT, BP and DiBP, respectively.Spanish MINECO (AEI/FEDER, UE) through project CTQ2017-88894-R and by Consejería de la Junta de Castilla y Le´on through project BU052P20 (both co-financed with European FEDER funds). L. Valverde-Som thanks JCyL for her postdoctoral contract through BU052P20project

Alternative uses for co-products: Harnessing the potential of valuable compounds from meat processing chains

peer-reviewedOpportunities for exploiting the inherent value of protein-rich meat processing co-products, in the context of increased global demand for protein and for sustainable processing systems, are discussed. While direct consumption maybe the most profitable route for some, this approach is influenced greatly by local and cultural traditions. A more profitable and sustainable approach may be found in recognizing this readily available and under-utilised resource can provide high value components, such as proteins, with targeted high value functionality of relevance to a variety of sectors. Applications in food & beverages, petfood biomedical and nutrition arenas are discussed. Utilization of the raw material in its entirety is a necessary underlying principle in this approach to help maintain minimum waste generation. Understanding consumer attitudes to these products, in particular when used in food or beverage systems, is critical in optimizing commercialization strategies.This work forms part of the ReValueProtein Research Project (Grant Award No. 11/F/043) which is supported by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) and the Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM) both funded by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan 2007–2013.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

Assessment of milk fat content in fat blends by 13 C NMR spectroscopy analysis of butyrate

Butyric acid (butyrate) is a candidate marker of milk fat in complex fat blends, since it is exclusive of milk triacylglycerols (TAGs) from different ruminant species. In this work, we determined the amount of milk fat used for the preparation of fat blends by 13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (13C NMR) spectroscopy-based quantification of butyrate. When tested on fat samples spiked with known amounts of reference bovine milk fat (BCR-519 certified material), the relative composition of the mixtures was reliably assessed through the integration of the diagnostic 13C NMR carbonyl (C1) or α-carbonyl methylene (C2) resonances of butyrate. NMR data exhibited strict correlation with high resolution-gas chromatography (GC) of fatty acid methyl esters (R2 = 0.99), which was used as an independent and well-established method for the determination of butyrate. Thus, 13C NMR can be used for the direct assessment of milk fat content in fat mixtures, at a limit of detection lower than 5%, with clear advantages over the traditional GC methods in terms of speed, robustness and minimal sample handling. The natural variability of butyrate in milk has been taken into account to estimate the uncertainty associated with the milk fat content in unknown fat blends

The impact of chemometrics on food traceability

In the last decades, mankind has become totally aware about the importance of food quality: nowadays authentication and traceability are words of general use. Food authentication verifies how much a food is in accordance with its label description and law and it could be considered a further guarantee for the quality and safety of a foodstuff. The traceability of food could be considered an essential element in ensuring safety and high quality of food. The synergistic use of instrumental analytical techniques and chemometrics represents a promising way to obtain trustworthy results in the development of authenticity and traceability models. This chapter deals with the potentialities of chemometrics tools in resolving some real issues related to food traceability and authenticity. Particular attention will be paid to the use of some exploratory, classification and discrimination techniques. In the first part of this chapter, a briefly description of European regulations (Authenticity and Traceability: the European Union point of view), and traceability and authenticity markers (Authenticity and Traceability: a scientific point of view) is reported. The second part is split into two sections: namely Food Authenticity and Food Traceability applications, where the main features and advantages of some chemometrics approaches are presented

The new EC Regulation on nutrition and health claims on foods

The area of health claims has been unregulated in Europe until recently. A new regulation on nutrition and health claims made on foods came into force on 19 January 2007. The Regulation has been eagerly awaited by all parties involved. The Regulation includes 37 whereas clauses, 29 Articles and an annex for nutrition claims and conditions applying to them. In practice, three main types of health claim are included in the Regulation, as referred to in Articles 13 and 14. The type of the scientific evidence is described slightly differently for Article 13.1 and Article 13.5: “generally accepted scientific evidence” and “newly developed scientific evidence”, respectively, although the scientific status of evidence shall be the same for all kinds of claims. So far, there are four types of guidance for applying the Regulation. The wording of health claims is an essential issue in the Regulation, as well as the concept of nutrient profiles. In the Regulation there are three issues of special interest, when compared to the Swedish Food Sector's Code of Practice, i.e. concerns about “other substances”, “food supplements” and “the average consumer”. The Regulation will be evaluated in 2013, reporting the impact of this Regulation on dietary choices and the potential impact on obesity and non-communicable diseases

The effect of coating architecture and defects on the corrosion behaviour of a PVD multilayer Inconel 625/Cr coating

This paper investigates the effect of substrate surface finish and deposition conditions of PVD multilayer Inconel 625/Cr coatings on their ability to act as a corrosion-barrier. The corrosion-barrier performance of the coatings was characterized by potentiodynamic testing and salt-spray testing followed by image analysis of the exposed surface; further coating properties were investigated through XRD, SEM, EDX and scratch testing. The results show that multilayering produced the expected improvement in scratch resistance however it did not affect corrosion behaviour. Interrupting the deposition process did not decrease the defect density. Defect density was observed to reduce with decreasing substrate surface finish. The corrosion barrier performance of the multilayer Inconel 625/Cr coating (bp100 nm) was greatly improved for coatings deposited on a polished substrate. For the multilayer Inconel 625/Cr coating system used in this work multilayering and process interruption did not prevent defects from limiting the corrosion barrier effectiveness of the coatings. Corrosion barrier performance was successfully enhanced by the use of low roughness substrates to minimise the defect density

Lead-free piezoceramics - Where to move on?

Lead-free piezoceramics aiming at replacing the market-dominant lead-based ones have been extensively searched for more than a decade worldwide. Some noteworthy outcomes such as the advent of commercial products for certain applications have been reported, but the goal, i.e., the invention of a lead-free piezocermic, the performance of which is equivalent or even superior to that of PZT-based piezoceramics, does not seem to be fulfilled yet. Nevertheless, the academic effort already seems to be culminated, waiting for a guideline to a future research direction. We believe that a driving force for a restoration of this research field needs to be found elsewhere, for example, intimate collaborations with related industries. For this to be effectively realized, it would be helpful for academic side to understand the interests and demands of the industry side as well as to provide the industry with new scientific insights that would eventually lead to new applications. Therefore, this review covers some of the issues that are to be studied further and deeper, so-to-speak, lessons from the history of piezoceramics, and some technical issues that could be useful in better understanding the industry demands. As well, the efforts made in the industry side will be briefly introduced for the academic people to catch up with the recent trends and to be guided for setting up their future research direction effectively.ope

Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device

Motivated by the effects of the filter bubble and echo chamber phenomena on social media, we developed a smart home device, Spkr, that unpredictably “pushes” socio-political discussion topics into the home. The device utilised trending Twitter discussions, categorised by their socio-political alignment, to present people with a purposefully assorted range of viewpoints. We deployed Spkr in 10 homes for 28 days with a diverse range of participants and interviewed them about their experiences. Our results show that Spkr presents a novel means of combating selective exposure to socio-political issues, providing participants with identifiably diverse viewpoints. Moreover, Spkr acted as a conversational prompt for discussion within the home, initiating collective processes and engaging those who would not often be involved in political discussions. We demonstrate how smart home assistants can be used as a catalyst for provocation by altering and pluralising political discussions within households