Location: Meat Safety and Quality
Project Number: 3040-42000-020-022-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Apr 1, 2026
End Date: Apr 30, 2027
Objective:
Animal operations near produce fields are a known contamination risk. This has been studied previously by researchers including several CPS funded studies that focused on effective set back distances and how weather increased or decreased transmission. However, there is a major knowledge gap about the specific role that weather and extreme weather events have on the transmission and environmental movement of foodborne pathogens from animal operations to adjacent lands including distances, persistence, and pathogen loads. To understand how transmission occurs, researchers need to have complete access to the animal operation to understand the specific foodborne pathogens present, access to environmental sampling, weather data, and access to study other potential sources of contamination. Addressing this knowledge gap will allow for the development of critical guidance to industry about specific weather patterns including wind direction, wind speed, humidity, temperature, rainfall, sunlight, and extreme weather events on which areas adjacent to animal operations have the highest risk of potential contamination to determine when additional monitoring may be necessary. This proposed study has a unique opportunity in that it involves the USDA’s U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, NE, which is a cattle feed lot with over 1,000 head of cattle. The research center also owns all the surrounding fields in every direction around the feedlot for at least 1 mile and has four different onsite weather stations around the property. Additionally, weather data (National Weather Service: drought indices, heat indexes), data from previous sampling on the farm, and data from studies in Yuma, AZ will be combined with data from this study. Therefore, the goal of this study is to assess how specific weather conditions alter transmission of E. coli O157:H7 from animal operations to adjacent lands through the following objectives:
Objective 1. Identify normal and extreme weather events associated with an increased risk of E. coli O157:H7 transmission.
Objective 2. Determine the impact of heat stress on E. coli O157:H7 shedding by cattle and the resulting airborne dissemination.
Approach:
Objective 1. Soil, water, air (both active and passive sampling), and plant samples will be collected every two weeks from May to August during both years of the study including: sites in eight different wind directions from the feedlot (N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, NE) at 100m, 250m, 500m, and 1000m distances from the feedlot (n=32) and cultured for E. coli O157:H7. Samples will be collected, enriched using CHROMagar O157 media. Weather patterns including temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric pressure, amount of cloud cover, duration of sunlight, and precipitation will be collected daily at the four different weather stations positioned around the feedlot. Throughout the study, any positive E. coli O157:H7 cultures will be compared to E. coli O157:H7 from the feedlot by conducting whole genome sequencing (WGS) on-site at the center using an Illumina MiSeq.
Objective 2. After exposure assessment of different environmental samples, a risk assessment model for produce contamination will be developed based on different distances to an animal feed operation. Machine learning and predictive analytics will be utilized to assess different weather patterns/factors associated with higher risk of transmitting E. coli O157:H7 from animal feed operations to produce fields or the surrounding environment.