The US Atomic Energy Commission has supported a small program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to determine (i) how the heat in waste warm water from electric generating plant condensers can be transferred economically to controlled environments, such as in greenhouses or animal enclosures; and (ii) to suggest, in a conceptual effort, how the heat exchange system could be applied to an intensive food production complex which might be constructed near a power station. A heat-using complex consisting of enclosures for fish, poultry, swine, and vegetable plants has been conceived with the goal of maximizing the use of heat and the wastes from the various operations by recycling. It is hoped that the concept will prove to be sufficiently attractive that a utility or an agribusiness company will undertake a small demonstration based on some of these ideas.

Study was preformed to assess the relationship between water consumption, feed intake, and respiratory disease in 2200 commercial finishing pigs in the U.K. The pigs were housed in 4 conventional finishing sheds in groups of 20-25 per pen and fed ad-lib. Water was supplied via bite drinkers. Meters were installed on the water supply line to each shed and daily readings were taken. Feed intake was assessed daily by the stockman. Coughing incidence was measured daily as an indicator of respiratory disease. On a clinicial evaluation Enzootic Pneumonia and/or Swine Influenza outbreaks occurred during the study. During the study 9 episode of decreased food intake occurred/ In 8 of these there was a concurrent decrease in water usage. During 4 episodes there was an increase in the coughing sours. In these 4 cases the water decrease preceeded the decline in food intake and the rise in coughing. A clear correlation between water consumption and food intake is demonstrated which suggests that daily water meter readings are an acceptable alternative to maintaining food intake as an indicator of health. It may be possible to use decreased water intakes as an indicator of impending respiratory disease. Overall a water intake of approx 1 litre per 10 kg body weight in the 30-60 kg range was observed.

The objective of this study was to document the effect of social ranking on the internal exposure of pigs to an antibiotic (fosfomycin) administered either in food or in drinking water. Signs of aggression were recorded at the feeder and drinker. The interindividual variability explained by the social rank was even greater when the test antibiotic was given in food despite the fact that the water consumption was less variable than the food intake. The range of plasma concentrations after administration of fosfomycin either in food or drinking water leads to a number of pigs in the treated group being exposed to rather low and highly variable concentrations of fosfomycin and not able to maintain adequate plasma concentrations above the typical minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Social rank clearly influences the level of exposure of pigs to fosfomycin both in food and drinking. However, its administration in drinking water is likely to be the best option to optimize antibiotic efficacy.

Food Business Operators (FBO) are responsible for the safety of the food they produce and in Ireland those under the regulatory control of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine are required to provide summary data on microbiological tests undertaken as part of their food safety controls. These data are provided to the National Reference Laboratory through the 25 private laboratories undertaking the testing. RESULTS: Over the five-year period Salmonella sp. was isolated from 0.7% of the 254,000 raw meat or raw meat products tested with the annual prevalence ranging from 0.5 to 1.1%. Poultry meats were consistently more contaminated than other meats with higher recovery rates in turkey (3.3%), duck (3.3%), and chicken (2.5%) compared with meats of porcine (1.6%), ovine (0.2%) and bovine origin (0.1%). Salmonella sp. was also isolated from 58 (0.06%) of the 96,115 cooked or partially cooked meat and meat products tested during the reporting period with the annual percentage positive samples ranging from 0.01 to 0.16%. A total of 50 different serotypes were recovered from raw meats over this period with the greatest diversity found in poultry samples (n = 36). Four serotypes, Kentucky, Typhimurium, Agona and Derby accounted for over 70% of all isolates detected on FBO testing over the period 2005 to 2009. CONCLUSIONS: Capturing microbiological data generated by Food Business Operators allows the regulatory sector access to a substantial amount of valuable data with the minimum financial outlay.

A convenient, robust and economical salting-out induced liquid–liquid microextraction (SILLME) method coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography/fluorescence detector (HPLC/FLD) for sample preparation, extraction and trace-level quantitative determination of six fluoroquinolones (FQs) in different samples was developed. The critical factors that influence the extraction efficiencies of the target analytes, such as the type of extraction solvent and salting-out reagent, the ratio of extraction solvent to salt, pH value and extraction time, were investigated. The system of acetonitrile/magnesium sulfate showed good extraction efficiencies for the target analytes. Under optimum conditions, the correlation coefficient (r²) was obtained within a range of 0.9990–0.9998 by spiking ultrapure water over a range of 0.002–0.100 μg mL⁻¹. Excellent sensitivity was attained with limits of detection (LODs, S/N = 3) ranging from 0.07–0.41 ng mL⁻¹, 0.09–0.62 ng mL⁻¹, 0.48–2.49 μg kg⁻¹, 0.80–5.00 ng mL⁻¹, 0.78–5.58 ng mL⁻¹ and 0.40–5.30 μg kg⁻¹ for ultrapure water, field water, honey, milk, swine plasma and muscle, respectively. While precision with inter- and intra-day relative standard deviations (RSDs, n = 5) for ultrapure water were observed in the range of 0.4–4.0% and 1.3–6.8%, respectively. Finally, the developed method was successfully applied to all of the abovementioned matrices as a promising method for the analysis of FQs.