Precipitation and temperature effects on mortality and lactation parameters of dairy cattle in California.

Data from 3 commercial rendering companies located in different regions of California were analyzed from September 2003 through August 2005 to examine the relationship of dairy calf and cow mortality to monthly average daily temperature and total monthly precipitation respectively. Yearly average mortality varied between rendering regions from 2.1 to 8.1% for mature cows. The relationship between cow and calf monthly mortality and monthly average daily temperature was U-shaped. Overall, months with average daily temperatures less than 14 and greater than 24 degrees C showed substantial increases in both calf and cow mortality with calf mortality being more sensitive to changes in these temperature ranges than cow mortality. Temperature changes were reflected in a 2-fold difference between the minimum and maximum mortality in cows and calves. Precipitation showed a weak effect with calf mortality and no effect with cow mortality. Data from Dairy Herd Improvement Association were used from 112 California herds tested over a 24-mo period to examine the relationship of milk production and quality with monthly average daily temperature and monthly precipitation. Somatic cell count and percent milk fat were either weakly or not associated with monthly average daily temperature and total monthly precipitation. However, total monthly precipitation was negatively associated with test day milk per milking cow regardless of the dairy's geographical location. Housing-specific associations for test day milk per milking cow were greater for total monthly precipitation than monthly average daily temperature, with the strongest negative association seen for dairies that do not provide shelter for cows. This suggests that providing suitable housing for lactating dairy cattle may ameliorate the precipitation-associated decrease in test day milk per milking cow.

Association of minimum inhibitory concentration cluster patterns with dairy management practices for environmental bacteria isolated from bulk tank milk.

Environmental bacteria have emerged over the past few years to become significant causes of mastitis. Bacteria in this group are often reported by practicing veterinarians to be increasingly resistant to intramammary therapy and responsible for elevated bulk tank somatic cell counts. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of association of the minimum inhibitory concentrations for selected antimicrobial agents with environmental bacteria isolated from bulk tank milk on California dairies and their housing facilities, husbandry practices, and antimicrobic-use strategies. Bulk tank milk samples were collected from 2 dairy cooperatives that had their milk cultured at the Milk Quality Laboratory, University of California Davis, Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center in Tulare, CA. Samples were collected from July 2001 through March 2002 on 88 d; and 404 environmental bacteria isolated from 93 dairies were found. Minimum inhibitory concentrations were determined on 337 of the isolates for 10 antimicrobial agents. Cluster analysis was performed on the minimum inhibitory concentration values for each organism, and 4 antimicrobial clusters with varying degrees of resistance were found.A 69-question survey questionnaire was completed on-farm for 49 of the 73 dairies that had at least 3 environmental bacterial isolates. The questionnaire sought information on housing facilities, milking management, mastitis prevention, antimicrobial usage strategies, and owner/veterinary involvement in disease control and prevention. Multinomial logistic regression analysis found significant associations between the antimicrobial agent-resistance cluster groups and some of the housing and bedding practices, failure to dry udders before milking, and antimicrobial treatment of nonmastitis conditions. No association was noted for antimicrobial agent treatment of mastitis and the resistance cluster patterns.

A comparison of three animal welfare assessment programs on California dairies.

Due to increased awareness of animal welfare issues by consumers, 3 voluntary programs were developed to assess animal welfare on commercial dairies in the United States. These programs include: 1) Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC), with minimum standards and a third-party audit system; 2) Dairy Quality Assurance Center (DQAC); and 3) University of California-Davis (UCD) program with self-assessments. The objective of this article was to provide an overview of the similarities and differences in content and scope of these programs. Furthermore, to ascertain the practical application of these programs on commercial dairies, a study was designed to compare the rank order of compliance scores of each program on 10 commercial California dairies using a survey and personal interviews with dairy owners or managers. The survey combined 316 statements from the DQAC checklist, the UCD assessment, and the HFAC standards. The mean (+/-SD) percentage compliance for the DQAC, HFAC, and UCD programs was 83 +/- 8, 94 +/- 3, and 85 +/- 6%, respectively. A ranking order from 1 to 10 was assigned to each dairy using the compliance score for each assessment program. Comparisons of ranking order between programs were not significant, indicating that different indices were being measured by each program. All programs, however, identified the same 2 lowest-ranking dairies, which indicated that the programs were able to identify facilities with the weakest welfare practices. The survey results show that selection of the available assessment programs for animal welfare on the dairy is important in determining the outcomes.

Controlling on-farm inventories of bulk-tank raw milk--an opportunity to protect public health.

Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point programs provide a systematic approach for the reduction of food safety problems through preventive measures. On-farm programs similar to Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, which target pathogen reduction and screening can provide assurance to processors and consumers that on-farm food safety is a high priority. Additional voluntary oversight of farm practices, including monitoring of and controlled access to raw milk supplies on the farm could further contribute to public food safety. Off-farm sales of raw milk directly to the public have resulted in foodborne outbreaks of multidrug resistant salmonellosis in California and Washington when raw milk was used for unlicensed cheese production. If dairy producers in those cases had voluntary programs in place to inventory, monitor, and control access to raw milk supplies, the outbreaks probably could have been prevented.

Sales of food aid as sign of distress, not excess.

In 1996 the sale and export of food aid from refugee camps near Uvira, Zaire, prompted a reduction in donated rations. However, research has revealed that the sales did not reflect an excess of food in the camps. They were provoked by the absence of important components of the food basket, by cultural aversion to the staple (maize) and oil provided, by difficulties in food preparation, and by the refugees' limited ability to diversify their diet and cover pressing non-food needs. Food sales improved the micronutrient content of diets but at the expense of energy lost from an already energy-deficient diet. At most 23% of the refugee households were eating sufficient and adequate diets; the poorest one-fifth of households were twice as likely to sell or exchange food as were other households and their diets were the worst. These findings demonstrate the perils of the gap between policy and practice in food-aid distribution.

The effects of maternal education on child nutritional status depend on socio-environmental conditions.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown an inconsistency in the association between maternal education and child nutritional status across socioeconomic levels. This may be because the beneficial effects of education are only significant when resources are sufficient but not abundant. METHODS: Associations were examined for differences across socioeconomic levels using data collected from 41 rural communities of Benin for 435 children aged 13-36 months. Village level indicators of household wealth were used together with child z-scores to partition the sample into three levels of socio-environment relative to conditions more or less conducive to child growth. RESULTS: Using an interactive linear regression model it was shown that for the population of children of women who had no more than 4 years of formal schooling, the association of maternal education and child weight differed significantly across the socio-environment. The relationship was flat and non-significant in the lowest socio-environment, positive and significant (P < 0.05) in intermediate conditions, and weakly positive under the best socio-environment conditions. Among children of mothers attaining higher levels of education, an unexpected negative association was found. It could be that maternal education had enabled women to participate in activities outside the home without simultaneously ensuring adequate child care.

PIP: To clarify the inconsistent findings of earlier studies of the association between maternal education and child nutritional status, data collected on 435 children 13-36 months of age from 41 rural communities in Benin were analyzed. It was hypothesized that maternal education would exert a stronger effect in households of intermediate socioeconomic status, where formal education would equip mothers to make decisions about the allocation of limited resources, than in villages where resources were either inadequate or overabundant. Socio-environmental rankings of village wealth were used to divide the sample into three socioeconomic categories. As hypothesized, a significant (p 0.01) linear relationship between maternal education and child weight-for-age existed only in the middle socioeconomic group. Overall, child nutritional status showed a general improvement up to the Level 3 category (3-4 years) of maternal education, then declined in Levels 4 and 5 (highest). It is speculated that the decline in nutritional status observed among children of the most educated mothers reflects the tendency of these women to be employed, with child care responsibilities allocated to an older sibling. Needed are studies that identify the factors in well-educated mothers' lives that compromise their ability to use that education to advance the health of their children.

Staff nurses' perceptions of barriers to effective pain management.

The purpose of this study was to investigate staff nurses' perceptions of barriers to pain management including lack of educational preparation; inadequacy of clinical practice skills; and certain legal/political, financial, and ethical problems. Staff nurses rated the adequacy of their knowledge and skills in each of these areas as well as how important they believed each area was on a four-point Likert scale (1 = very inadequate or very unimportant to 4 = very adequate or very important). Nurses were also asked to list the most important pain management problems in their institutions. A random sample of 24 hospitals stratified on the basis of size was drawn from four states in the United States. Of 125 nurses contacted, 108 (86%) responded to the questionnaire. Nurses rated their educational preparation (mean, 2.6; SD, 0.05) and knowledge of legal/political issues (mean, 2.3; SD, 0.05) midway between inadequate and adequate. Practice was rated as adequate (mean 3.1; SD, 0.36), and financial issues were rated as inadequate (mean, 1.9; SD, 0.06). Knowledge of ethical issues was adequate (mean, 3.1; SD, 0.03). Implications of these ratings based on the literature in pain management are discussed.

Acoustic probe-based ELISA.

The effects of acoustic microstreaming during incubation steps of a prototypical three-step ELISA were studied. Acoustic microstreaming, an orderly mixing of microwell contents induced by linear oscillation of immersible acoustic probes, was shown to be particularly effective when coupled with locating the solid phase on the surface of the probes. Optical densities achieved for acoustic probe-based assays were equivalent to those for uninsonated microwell-based assays with only 20% of the microwell solid phase surface area. Low-level antibody detection was significantly improved and antibody incubation times significantly shortened without loss of signal. Acoustic probe-based assays can enhance assay and laboratory efficiency through testing for multiple analytes in a single sample or increasing available binding surface area (by using probe and well surfaces simultaneously), and by eliminating quenching. Acoustic probe ELISA methodology has significant implications for cost-effective automation.

Fourteen-day inhalation study in rats, using aged and diluted sidestream smoke from a reference cigarette. II. DNA adducts and alveolar macrophage cytogenetics.

The chemical constituents of cigarette smoke are greatly diluted in environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). In the typical indoor environment where cigarettes are smoked, the mean value of respirable suspended particles is approximately 0.1 mg/m3. In this study, we used aged and diluted sidestream smoke (ADSS) of 1R4F University of Kentucky research cigarettes as a surrogate for ETS and exposed Sprague-Dawley rats nose-only to 0, 0.1, 1.0, and 10 mg wet total particulate matter (WTPM)/m3 for 6 hr per day for 14 consecutive days. DNA from lung, heart, larynx, and liver was tested for adduct formation after 7 and 14 days of exposure and after 14 days of recovery. In addition, alveolar macrophages from animals exposed for 7 days were examined for chromosomal aberrations. Exposure-related DNA adducts were not observed in any of the animals at 0.1 or 1.0 mg WTPM/m3, which represent ambient and 10-fold exaggerated ETS concentrations, respectively. Slight diagonal radioactive zones, characteristic of adducts observed in human smokers and in animals exposed to mainstream smoke, were observed, but only in lung and heart DNA of animals exposed to the highest concentration of ADSS (10 mg WTPM/m3), a 100-fold exaggeration of typical field measurements of ETS. The mean relative adduct labeling values (+/- SE) were 8.7 (+/- 0.2) adducts per 10(9) nucleotides for lung DNA and 5.7 (+/- 0.7) adducts per 10(9) nucleotides for heart DNA after 14 days of exposure. No elevation in chromosomal aberrations was observed in alveolar macrophages.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Almond hulls in diets for lactating goats: effects on yield and composition of milk, feed intake, and digestibility.

Four cubed rations of similar chemical composition were fed ad libitum to 16 lactating yearling Alpine goats. The rations contained 0, 15, 25, and 35% almond hulls; 0, .5, 1, and 1% urea; and 58.4, 42.5, 32.0, and 22.0% alfalfa hay (DM basis). Chromic oxide was added as a digestibility marker. Average nutrient composition of diets was 91% DM, 20% CP, 32% NDF, 9% ash, and 4.39 Mcal gross energy/kg. Goats were randomly assigned to one of four diet orders in four replications of a 4 X 4 Latin square, blocked by goat and period. Data were collected in the 3rd wk of each period. Diets containing 25 and 35% almond hulls increased DM intake and reduced milk protein percent and digestibilities of DM, organic matter, ash, and NDF. Dry matter intake and weight gain were highest for the diet containing 35% almond hulls and 1% urea. Results indicate that almond hulls and urea can be fed to lactating goats up to these amounts without adversely affecting lactation.

Costs and benefits associated with treatment for coronary artery disease.

Direct and indirect costs of medical and of surgical treatment are presented for patients entered into the Birmingham portion of the Coronary Artery Surgery Study. For comparison, similar results are shown for the Birmingham portion of the national Cooperative Unstable Angina Study. In the Unstable Angina Study, mean inpatient costs at the end of 1 year in the study were $6867 for medical therapy, $10,574 for surgical therapy and $23,045 for those who failed medical therapy and required late surgery. A stepwise multiple regression analysis shows that the single best predictor of cost was the number of myocardial infarctions that the patient had while in the study. A discriminant-function analysis identified 85% of the medical patients who required late surgery. A significantly lower proportion of surgical than medical patients returned to work. Total inpatient costs for patients in the Coronary Artery Surgery Study (i.e, patients with stable angina) were $3432, $11,100 and $13,554 for medical, surgical and late surgical patients, respectively, for the first year in the study. There was no significant difference in the percentage of medical and surgical patients who were working at the end of 1 year. According to their own perceptions, the surgical group was in the best and the late surgical group in the worst health.