Exploring the adoption of food safety measures in smallholder dairy systems in Ethiopia: implications for food safety and public health

Milk is highly perishable and can be a conduit for the transmission of zoonotic foodborne pathogens. This cross-sectional survey involving 159 farming households and 18 participant observations in participating farms was undertaken in Addis Ababa and surrounding areas in Oromia, Ethiopia to assess the adoption of food safety measures in smallholder farms. Adoption of food safety measures at the farm level influences milk quality and safety across the entire milk value chain, from "grass to glass". This study considered the adoption of 36 different food safety measures (FSM) including animal health, milking hygiene, hygienic milk storage, and hygienic milking premises. A weighted food safety index (FSI, ranging from 0 to 100) was calculated for each household based on FSM adopted. Ordinary Least Squares linear regression was used to quantify the factors of FSM adoption by smallholder farmers. The overall food safety index ranged between 59.97-60.75. A majority of farmers may be classified as moderate adopters of FSM (index ranging between 30-70%). Farm and farmers' characteristics such as herd size, farmer's education level, farmer's expertise in dairying, and participation of the farm in the formal milk value- chain, were shown to positively influence the level of adoption of FSM. Low farm-level adoption of FSM has food safety and public health implications as it can lead to milk contamination and, therefore, expose consumers to foodborne diseases. There is an imperative for policymakers to design and implement policies and intervention strategies that lead to increased farmer training related to livestock production and awareness of the important role that FSM adoption can play in improving food safety and public health

Anharmonicity and self-similarity of the free energy landscape of protein G

The near-native free energy landscape of protein G is investigated through 0.4 microseconds-long atomistic molecular dynamics simulations in explicit solvent. A theoretical and computational framework is used to assess the time-dependence of salient thermodynamical features. While the quasi-harmonic character of the free energy is found to degrade in a few ns, the slow modes display a very mild dependence on the trajectory duration. This property originates from a striking self-similarity of the free energy landscape embodied by the consistency of the principal directions of the local minima, where the system dwells for several ns, and of the virtual jumps connecting them.Comment: revtex, 6 pages, 5 figure

Aflatoxins: Serious threat to food safety and food security: But is it related to livestock?

Globally, crops are being infested with molds. In tropical regions, Aspergillus species commonly occur, some of which produce aflatoxins. Aflatoxins are hepatotoxic, nephrotoxic and carcinogenic to different degrees in livestock as well as humans, causing acute fatal disease as well as chronic illness. Cattle are relatively resistant due to metabolism of toxins in the rumen, while poultry is highly susceptible. Chronic exposure to aflatoxins may cause reduced growth and immunosuppression and is associated with stunting in children and reduced production in livestock. In addition to exposure from crops, metabolites are transferred to breast milk and animal products, especially dairy. Thus, aflatoxins pose health risks to humans when consumed through crops or animal- source food. The impacts of aflatoxins on animal health have consequences on food production and livelihoods of farmers. However, since some animals are less sensitive than humans, feeding contaminated crops to animals diverts it from humans. Livestock may therefore be considered simultaneously as suffering from the toxins, as a way to utilise contaminated products and save humans, and as a potential risk for humans. How does the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) approach this complex topic? • Carrying out extensive literature-based reviews and mapping of aflatoxins. • In collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a series of 2020 policy briefs by leading experts were released in 2013. • The Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA)-ILRI Hub has established a shared mycotoxin-research platform in Nairobi, Kenya, that is widely used by partners in the region and beyond. • The BecA-ILRI Hub is working with Kenyan, Tanzanian, other African, Australian and US partners to develop better sampling and diagnostics, develop models and maps of risk and breed, for less susceptible maize varieties. • Projects assessing health risks and economic costs of aflatoxins in the feed dairy chain are underway in Kenya • In collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), technical packages on aflatoxins and livestock for the East Africa region are being prepared. • Carrying out assessments of the knowledge of, and attitudes to, aflatoxin among milk traders and consumers, and willingness-to-pay for aflatoxin-free milk. • Conducting surveys of aflatoxins in marketed dairy products. • Assessing aflatoxins in commercial pig feed in Uganda and possible effects on growth. With this research portfolio, the complex problem of aflatoxins as a threat to animal and human health, and to food production, security and safety, will be better understood

Detection of Asynchronous Message Passing Errors Using Static Analysis

Concurrent programming is hard and prone to subtle errors. In this paper we present a static analysis that is able to detect some commonly occurring kinds of message passing errors in languages with dynamic process creation and communication based on asynchronous message passing. Our analysis is completely automatic, fast, and strikes a proper balance between soundness and completeness: it is effective in detecting errors and avoids false alarms by computing a close approximation of the interprocess communication topology of programs. We have integrated our analysis in dialyzer, a widely used tool for detecting software defects in Erlang programs, and demonstrate its effectiveness on libraries and applications of considerable size. Despite the fact that these applications have been developed over a long period of time and are reasonably well-tested, our analysis has managed to detect a significant number of previously unknown message passing errors in their code

The White Revolution in India: The end or a new beginning?

The milk revolution, popularly known as White Revolution, started in India in 1970 with a governmentsponsored programme - Operation Flood. This brought significant improvement to smallholder dairy systems by promoting cross-breeding, improving access to feed, veterinary services, markets, milk processing and preservation infrastructure. By 2013, India was the world’s largest milk producing country with total production of 132 megatonnes up from 17 in 1951. However, the cooperative system, the main vehicle for dairy development, was not successful everywhere especially, in regions where dairying had less potential to scale-up, leaving traditional milk production, with 80% of the market share, behind. Although cross-breeding became popular, average milk productivity per animal is still far below the global average and the traditional sector lacks awareness, capacity, incentives and resources. Simultaneously, urban and peri-urban dairying is developing rapidly, but accompanied by health and environmental experiments, Overall, we need systematic, location specific, holistic approaches to address the constraints. We present initial findings on promising approaches from research in Assam, Bihar and urban and peri-urban dairying. These suggest a ‘third way’ of dairy development driven by demand and value chain evolution that can complement the approaches implemented by co-operatives and more recently by large private sector investment