Food can become contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms at all stages of manufacture and processing. However, there is a recognized potential for the on-farm transfer of pathogens to food during primary production. Livestock infected with zoonotic agents can excrete pathogens into their feces, and animal wastes have been implicated as a source of infection in a number of cases of human food-borne illness. Since livestock wastes are routinely disposed of by spreading to agricultural land used for food production, the practice of waste spreading is an obvious consideration for any integrated pathogen-spread prevention-control strategy.
Over the last decade, there has been an increase in the awareness of British farmers on the best practices for storage and disposal of livestock wastes. The publication of specific management guidance was driven largely by the need to control chemical pollution from wastes, including nitrate contamination of watercourses and airborne ammonia emissions. The effects of these chemical pollutants are immediate and obvious and overshadow more subtle environmental damage such as the dissemination of bacterial pathogens. Evaluation of current guidance, which has been targeted toward the control of chemical pollutants, suggested that it may increase the length of time that pathogens present in the waste could survive in the environment. Of particular concern is a move toward immediate solid waste incorporation and band spreading or direct injection of liquid wastes into soil. Such practices are likely to decrease the rate of waste drying, the levels of UV irradiation, and the daily range of temperatures experienced by pathogens present in the waste, potentially extending their survival.
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