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Vaccination against Newcastle disease (ND) has been routinely implemented in the Belgian professional poultry sector since 1993, using genotype I and II vaccines. Despite this, an outbreak of genotype VII.2 avian paramyx-ovirus 1 (APMV-1) occurred in 2018, with 20 reported cases over the course of 3 months. Although the economic impact on the professional poultry sector was limited, this epizootic raised questions regarding the efficacy of implemented classical genotype I and II vaccines against phylogenetically distant exotic velogenic strains. The present study provides insights into the protective efficacy of standard vaccination programs applied in layer and broiler flocks against the introduction and transmission of this velogenic APMV-1 VII.2 strain. For fully field-vaccinated 26-week-old layer chickens, high levels of specific antibodies were measured at the time of the velogenic APMV-1 challenge, resulting in good clinical protection. However, despite the observed humoral immunity, viral excretion was not prevented, leading to transmission of the virus to non-infected sentinel birds. In fully field-vaccinated 4-week-old broiler chickens, assessment of vaccine uptake and coverage revealed low levels of ND specific antibodies despite double vaccination at day 1 and day 14. Consequently, poor protection against velogenic APMV-1 infection was observed, with both clinical signs and viral excretion occurring in both infected and sentinel birds. This study demonstrates that the introduction of velogenic APMV-1 VII.2 can lead to its dissemination among the Belgian avian poultry population despite the implementation of standard vaccination., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

The goal of this systematic review is to investigate the applicability of the results from existing life cycle analysis (LCA) and environmental assessments studies in informing nutritional strategies for environmentally sustainable poultry meat production. This paper reports on a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) of articles published between 2000 and 2020. The studies reviewed were conducted in developed countries including UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Canada, and USA. All articles were written in English. The REA includes studies on LCA of differing strains of meat poultry and production systems, studies on poultry manure emission and studies on environmental assessments of plant-based feed ingredients. The review covered studies on soil carbon dynamics associated with plant-based ingredients. Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed were used to obtain the 6,142 population articles. The multistage screening process resulted in 29 studies from which 15 studies included LCA while the rest 14 studies analyzed NH 3 emission of broilers. All studies based on LCA were descriptive and did not include replications. Only 12 studies assessed the effect of interventions to reduce NH 3 emission of broiler litter using replicated layout designs. It is concluded that the broiler industry in UK, EU, and North America cannot rely on results of existing LCA and environmental assessments studies to inform their nutritional strategy and poultry meat production due to a shortage of reliable in vivo data assessing interventions in controlled studies., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Stocking density is a prominent topic in public debates on animal welfare and was one of the reasons for the European Commission to set limits to the stocking density on broiler farms. The objective of this paper was to calculate in detail the financial impact of changes in technical and management variables due to decreasing stocking densities in line with new European Union (EU) regulations. Therefore, the productive performance indicators such as BW, mortality, or feed conversion and farm technical data such as water consumption and heating of 3 independent experiments conducted at a poultry research station in Flanders (Belgium) were combined. Using the partial budget technique only those elements that change with stocking density have been taken into account. Reducing stocking density implies a recalculation of all costs on a reduced number of birds. This yields an economic situation that leaves hardly any profit margin for most of the broiler producers under the present market conditions. It was found that the critical threshold of stocking density for maintaining profitability under the present market and technical conditions is around 46 kg/m(2), thus well above the EU maximum of 42 kg/m(2). It is shown, however, that with changing broiler feed and meat prices, the impact might be less negative in economic terms.

According to the European Food Safety Authority, salmonellosis is still one of the main causes of infectious foodborne gastroenteritis in humans. Broilers are an important source of salmonellosis after eggs and pork. Between 1987 and 1999 the trend of human salmonellosis incidence in Belgium increased constantly. However, from 2000 until 2005 a decrease in human cases was observed, probably following the sanitary measures implemented in the poultry breeder and laying sector. In order to decrease human infections it is essential to tackle the problem at the farm level to minimize cross-contamination from farm to fork. This paper seeks to answer two questions: (i) given the Salmonella status of the farm at a certain occasion (equal to the sampling time of the flock), what are the risk factors that the farm will be Salmonella positive at a following occasion? And (ii) what are the risk factors for a farm to be persistently positive for two consecutive flocks? We used surveillance data on 6824 broiler flocks studied for Salmonella infectivity from 2005 to 2006 in Belgium. The farms were tested regularly (3 weeks before slaughter of each broiler flock) for the presence of Salmonella based on multiple faecal samples per flock on a farm yielding clustered data. Generalized estimating equations, alternating logistic regression models, and random-intercept logistic regression models were employed to analyse these correlated binary data. Our results indicated that there are many factors that influence Salmonella risk in broiler flocks, and that they interact. Accounting for interactions between risk factors leads to an improved determination of those risk factors that increase infection with Salmonella. For the conditional analysis, the risk factors found to increase the risk of Salmonella infection on a farm at a current occasion given the previous Salmonella status included: Salmonella infection of day-old chicks (of the current flock); a previously infected flock even though the farm was equipped with a hygiene place to change clothes prior to entering the broiler house; having temporary workmen when there was a separation between birds of different species; and separating birds of different species in the Walloon region relative to the Flanders region. Sanitary measures such as a cleaning and disinfecting procedure conducted by an external cleaning firm, applying the all-in all-out procedure, and hand washing decreased the risk despite their interaction with other factors. From the joint analysis, the most important factors identified for increased risk for persistent Salmonella on a farm involved the interaction between having temporary workmen when there were poultry or farmers in contact with foreign poultry or persons, and the interaction between having temporary workmen when there were poultry or farmers in contact with external poultry or persons.

To Paul Meyer and Les Films de l'Églantine, Belgium Paul Meyer, filmmaker and documentarist, born September 29, 1920, died September 29, 2007 in Belgium. He had his own production company Les films de l´églantine in his hometown Barchon, Belgium. Due to lucky circumstances, I met him during the French Film Festival, Tübingen, in 1995 and am still in possession of a personal hand-written letter from him, dated August, 1995. Our talk is documented in Blickpunkt: Film of 17th July, 1995. Der Beitrag beschreibt am Beispiel von vier Dokumentarfilmen exemplarisch die Arbeit und das Werk von Luigi di Gianni, einem wichtigen Vertreter visueller Anthropologie in Europa, Schüler von Ernesto de Martino und Paul Meyer. Die Arbeiten zeigen therapeutische Riten süditalienischer Volksreligiosität aus der Zeit zwischen den fünfziger Jahren bis in die erste Dekade des 21. Jahrhunderts hinein und würdigen das Werk di Giannis in seiner bisher vernachlässigten Bedeutung für die Religionswissenschaft und die Europäische Religionsgeschichte. The contribution describes the work and oeuvre of Luigi di Gianni, an important representative of Visual Anthropology in Europe, pupil of Ernesto de Martino and Paul Meyer, via examples of four documentaries. The works show therapeutic rites of south Italian popular religiosity from the 1950 s until the first decade of the 21st century and are honouring the work of di Gianni in its so far neglected importance for the Study of Religion and the European History of Religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To estimate the true prevalence of Campylobacter and the diagnostic sensitivity of routine detection methods by applying a Bayesian modelling approach. Methods and Results: Results from a Belgium-wide survey of Campylobacter contamination in chicken meat preparations ( n = 656 samples) showed that Campylobacter was detected in 24·2% of the samples by enrichment, compared with 41% detected by direct plating. Combining positive results from both methods increased the apparent prevalence to 48·02%. Bayesian model was set up in WinBUGS software, the model estimates Campylobacter prevalence as 60% (95% Credibility interval (CI): 47–82%), and the sensitivity of enrichment culture and direct plating as 41% (95% CI: 31–52%) and 69% (95% CI: 50–85%), respectively. Conclusions: The parallel use of direct plating and enrichment culture adds value for Campylobacter detection from chicken meat preparations, but the false-negative results from each culture method must be taken into account. Significance and Impact of the Study: Monitoring data could be strongly biased by the microbiological techniques used to generate it. To circumvent this bias, we describe an applied Bayesian framework for better interpretation of Campylobacter survey data in view of the imperfect test characteristics of routine culture methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The elements manganese, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, selenium, molybdenum, cadmium, antimony, thallium, lead and mercury, and selected persistent organochlorine compounds (dioxins, marker and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls, dichlorodiphenyltricholroethane (DDT) and metabolites as well as other chlorinated pesticides) were analysed in Belgian free-range eggs obtained from hens of private owners and of commercial farms. It was found that eggs from private owners were more contaminated than eggs from commercial farms. The ratios of levels in eggs from private owners to the levels in eggs from commercial farms ranged from 2 to 8 for the toxic contaminants lead, mercury, thallium, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls and the group of DDT. DDT contamination was marked by the substantial presence of p,p′-DDT in eggs from private owners in addition to dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p-DDE) and dichlorodiphenyl-dichloroethane (p,p′-DDD). It is postulated that environmental pollution is at the origin of the higher contamination of eggs from private owners. Extensive consumption of eggs from private owners is likely to result in toxic equivalent quantity intake levels exceeding the tolerable weekly intake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]