RESUMEN

Increasing globalization and international trade contribute to rapid expansion of animal and human diseases. Hence, preparedness is warranted to prevent outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases or detect outbreaks in an early stage. We developed a rapid risk assessment tool (RRAT) to inform risk managers on the incursion risk of multiple livestock diseases, about the main sources for incursion and the change of risk over time. RRAT was built as a relational database to link data on disease outbreaks worldwide, on introduction routes and on disease-specific parameters. The tool was parameterized to assess the incursion risk of 10 livestock diseases for the Netherlands by three introduction routes: legal trade in live animals, legal trade of animal products, and animal products illegally carried by air travelers. RRAT calculates a semi-quantitative risk score for the incursion risk of each disease, the results of which allow for prioritization. Results based on the years 2016-2018 indicated that the legal introduction routes had the highest incursion risk for bovine tuberculosis, whereas the illegal route posed the highest risk for classical swine fever. The overall incursion risk via the illegal route was lower than via the legal routes. The incursion risk of African swine fever increased over the period considered, whereas the risk of equine infectious anemia decreased. The variation in the incursion risk over time illustrates the need to update the risk estimates on a regular basis. RRAT has been designed such that the risk assessment can be automatically updated when new data becomes available. For diseases with high-risk scores, model results can be analyzed in more detail to see which countries and trade flows contribute most to the risk, the results of which can be used to design risk-based surveillance. RRAT thus provides a multitude of information to evaluate the incursion risk of livestock diseases at different levels of detail. To give risk managers access to all results of RRAT, an online visualization tool was built.

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RESUMEN

The microbiological condition of steel mesh gloves commonly used in the meat industry was assessed and an adequate sanitation protocol devised in the course of three experiments conducted in the boning room of a beef packaging operation. The first pilot-experiment monitored the average bacterial load of gloves at various times during the working day, by releasing the tissue trapped inside the gloves through ultrasonic cavitation. After 2, 4, and 6 h of boning, steel mesh gloves contained ca. 9.1 and 8.3 log10 CFU/g mesophilic and psychrotrophic organisms, respectively. Enterobacteriaceae colony counts varied from ca. 5.5 to 8.5 log10 CFU/g. In the second experiment ultrasonic cavitation was followed by disinfection in a 2% Halamid® (sodium paratoluene sulfonchloramide) solution for 5 min. Aerobic mesophilic and psychrotrophic colony counts after 2 h of boning were still 7.4 and 6.7 log10 CFU/g, respectively, while the average Enterobactericeae colony count was 4.9 log10 CFU/g. In the third experiment gloves were subjected to a protocol including: 1) cleaning by ultrasonic cavitation in the presence of a suitable detergent for 5 min, 2) rinsing with tap water, 3) disinfection in a 2% Halamid® solution for 5 min, and 4) rinsing with tap water. This resulted in counts below the limits of detection for aerobic organisms and Enterobacteriaceae . After 2 h of boning the average mesophilic and psychrotrophic aerobic colony counts were ca. 5.5 and 4.9 log10 CFU/g, respectively and the Enterobacteriaceae colony count ca. 3.9 log10 CFU/g. This contrasted sharply with the much higher levels observed when no sanitation protocol was followed. Hence the developed protocol reduces the risk of cross-contamination by steel mesh gloves considerably.