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Combine knowledge of animal behavior with physiological measurements to develop transportation and management practices for producers to use to help increase animal comfort and well-being and assure that animals will be presented for slaughter with few pathogens. We will address this problem with cattle and pigs.
Animal production environments including transportation of food producing animals are stressful and may be linked to increased pathogen contamination of animals at slaughter. We will develop an integrated team of ARS and University scientists to understand the complex animal-environment interactions that lead to preharvest food safety problems in cattle and pigs. Knowledge from the areas of cattle and swine behavior, immunology, endocrinology, nutrition, microbiology, and epidemiology will be required to address these issues. The new money are for a microbiologist for this project.