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Importance of the farm environment and wildlife for transmission of Campylobacter jejuni in a pasture-based dairy herd

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posted on 2023-05-03, 20:18 authored by Delphine RappDelphine Rapp, Colleen Ross, Shen Hea
Cattle are an established reservoir of the foodborne bacterial pathogen Campylobacter jejuni. Our six-month study aimed to evaluate sources and pathways governing long-term presence of C. jejuni in a pasture-based dairy herd. C. jejuni was detected in all sample types (soil, pasture, stock drinking water, bird, rodents and cow faeces). It was persistently detected from cow (54%; 49/90 samples) and bird (36%; 77/211) faeces. Genetic comparison of 252 C. jejuni isolates identified 30 Multi-Locus Sequence Types (ST). ST-61 and ST-42 were persistent in the herd and accounted for 43% of the cow isolates. They were also detected on pasture collected from fields both recently and not recently grazed, indicating that grazed pasture is an important pathway and reservoir for horizontal transmission among cows. ST-61 accounted for 9% of the bird isolates and was detected at four of the six sampling events, suggesting that bird populations might contribute to the cycling of ruminant-adapted genotypes on-farm. Overall, the results indicated that management of grazed pasture and supplementary feed contaminated by bird droppings could be targeted to effectively reduce transmission of C. jejuni to dairy herds, the farm environment and ultimately to humans.

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Rights statement

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

MDPI

Journal title

Microorganisms

ISSN

2076-2607

Citation

Rapp, D., Ross, C., & Hea, S. (2020). Importance of the farm environment and wildlife for transmission of Campylobacter jejuni in a pasture-based dairy herd. Microorganisms, 8(12), 1877. doi:10.3390/microorganisms8121877

Job code

PRJ0126319

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