Rungano Stan Dzikamunhenga

Pain Management in the Neonatal Piglet During Routine Management Procedures. Part 1: A Systematic Review of Randomized and Non-Randomized Intervention Studies

Abstract Routine procedures carried out on piglets (i.e. castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, and ear notching) are considered painful. Unfortunately the efficacy of current pain mitigation modalities is poorly understood. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesize the existing primary scientific literature regarding the effectiveness of pain management interventions used for routine procedures on piglets. The review question was, ‘In piglets under twenty-eight days old, undergoing castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, and/or methods of identification that involve cutting of the ear tissue, what is the effect of pain mitigation compared with no pain mitigation on behavioral and non-behavioral outcomes that indicate procedural pain and post-procedural pain?’ A review protocol was designed a priori. Data sources used were Agricola (EBSCO), CAB Abstracts (Thomson Reuters), PubMed, Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), BIOSIS Previews (Thomson Reuters), and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text. No restrictions on year of publication or language were placed on the search. Eligible studies assessed an intervention designed to mitigate the pain of the procedures of interest and included a comparison group that did not receive an intervention. Eligible non-English studies were translated using a translation service. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts for relevance using pre-defined questions. Data were extracted from relevant articles onto pre-defined forms. From the 2203 retrieved citations forty publications, containing 52 studies met the eligibility criteria. In 40 studies, piglets underwent castration only. In seven studies, piglets underwent tail docking only. In one study, piglets underwent teeth clipping only, and in one study piglets underwent ear notching only. Three studies used multiple procedures. Thirty-two trial arms assessed general anesthesia protocols, 30 trial arms assessed local anesthetic protocols, and 28 trial arms assessed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) protocols. Forty-one trial arms were controls where piglets received either placebo or no treatment. Forty-five outcomes were extracted from the studies, however only the results from studies that assessed cortisol (six studies), β-endorphins (one study), vocalisations (nine studies), and pain-related behaviors (nine studies) are reported. Other outcomes were reported in only one or two studies. Confident decision making will likely be difficult based on this body of work because lack of comprehensive reporting precludes calculation of the magnitude of pain mitigation for most outcomes.

Pain management in the neonatal piglet during routine management procedures. Part 2 :Grading the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations

Abstract Piglets reared in swine production in the USA undergo painful procedures that include castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, and identification with ear notching or tagging. These procedures are usually performed without pain mitigation. The objective of this project was to develop recommendations for pain mitigation in 1- to 28-day-old piglets undergoing these procedures. The National Pork Board funded project to develop recommendations for pain mitigation in piglets. Recommendation development followed a defined multi-step process that included an evidence summary and estimates of the efficacies of interventions. The results of a systematic review of the interventions were reported in a companion paper. This manuscript describes the recommendation development process and the final recommendations. Recommendations were developed for three interventions (CO2/O2 general anesthesia, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and lidocaine) for use during castration. The ability to make strong recommendations was limited by low-quality evidence and strong certainty about variation in stakeholder values and preferences. The panel strongly recommended against the use of a CO2/O2 general anesthesia mixture, weakly recommended for the use of NSAIDs and weakly recommended against the use of lidocaine for pain mitigation during castration of 1- to 28-day-old piglets.

Updated systematic review: Associations between proximity to animal feeding operations and health of individuals in nearby communities

ObjectiveThe objective of this review was to update a systematic review of associations between living near an animal feeding operation (AFO) and human health.MethodsThe MEDLINE® and MEDLINE® In-Process, Centre for Agricultural Biosciences Abstracts, and Science Citation Index databases were searched. Reference lists of included articles were hand-searched. Eligible studies reported exposure to an AFO and an individual-level human health outcome. Two reviewers performed study selection and data extraction.ResultsThe search returned 3702 citations. Sixteen articles consisting of 10 study populations were included in the analysis. The health outcomes were lower and upper respiratory tracts, MRSA, other infectious disease, neurological, psychological, dermatological, otologic, ocular, gastrointestinal, stress and mood, and other non-infectious health outcomes. Most studies were observational and used prevalence measures of outcome. An association between Q fever risk and proximity to goat production was reported. Other associations were unclear. Risk of bias was serious or critical for most exposure-outcome associations. Multiplicity (i.e., a large number of potentially correlated outcomes and exposures assessed on the same study subjects) was common in the evidence base.ConclusionsFew studies reported an association between surrogate clinical outcomes and AFO proximity for respiratory tract-related outcomes. There were no consistent dose-response relationships between surrogate clinical outcome and AFO proximity. A new finding was that Q fever in goats is likely associated with an increased Q fever risk in community members. The review results for the non-respiratory health outcomes were inconclusive because only a small number of studies were available or the between-study results were inconsistent.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42014010521

Systematic review of the magnitude of change in prevalence and quantity of Salmonella after administration of pathogen reduction treatments on pork carcasses.

Abstract Objective: In this systematic review, we summarized change in Salmonella prevalence and/or quantity associated with pathogen reduction treatments (washes, sprays, steam) on pork carcasses or skin-on carcass parts in comparative designs (natural or artificial contamination). Methods: In January 2015, CAB Abstracts (1910–2015), SCI and CPCI–Science (1900–2015), Medline® and Medline® In-Process (1946–2015) (OVIDSP), Science.gov, and Safe Pork (1996–2012) were searched with no language or publication type restrictions. Reference lists of 24 review articles were checked. Two independent reviewers screened 4001 titles/abstracts and assessed 122 full-text articles for eligibility. Only English-language records were extracted. Results: Fourteen studies (5 in commercial abattoirs) were extracted and risk of bias was assessed by two reviewers independently. Risk of bias due to systematic error was moderate; a major source of bias was the potential differential recovery of Salmonella from treated carcasses due to knowledge of the intervention. The most consistently observed association was a positive effect of acid washes on categorical measures of Salmonella; however, this was based on individual results, not a summary effect measure. Conclusion: There was no strong evidence that any one intervention protocol (acid temperature, acid concentration, water temperature) was clearly superior to others for Salmonella control.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the antibiotic treatment for infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis: an update

Abstract Infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis (IBK) is a common and important disease of calves. Without effective vaccines, antibiotic therapy is often implemented to minimize the impact of IBK. This review updates a previously published systematic review regarding comparative efficacy for antibiotic treatments of IBK. Available years of Centre for Biosciences and Agriculture International and MEDLINE databases were searched, including non-English results. Also searched were the American Association of Bovine Practitioners and World Buiatrics Congress conference proceedings from 1996 to 2016, reviews since 2013, reference lists from relevant trials, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration New Animal Drug Application summaries. Eligible studies assessed antibiotic treatment of naturally-occurring IBK in calves randomly allocated to group at the individual level. Outcomes of interest were clinical score, healing time, unhealed ulcer risk, and ulcer surface area. A mixed-effects model comparing active drug with placebo was employed for all outcomes. Heterogeneity was assessed visually and using Cochrans Q-test. Thirteen trials assessing nine treatments were included. Compared with placebo, most antibiotic treatments were effective. There was evidence that the treatment effect differed by day of outcome measurement. Visually, the largest differences were observed 7–14 days post-treatment. These results indicate improved IBK healing with many antibiotics and suggest the need for randomized trials comparing different antibiotic treatments.

Review: Assessment of completeness of reporting in intervention studies using livestock: an example from pain mitigation interventions in neonatal piglets.

Accurate and complete reporting of study methods, results and interpretation are essential components for any scientific process, allowing end-users to evaluate the internal and external validity of a study. When animals are used in research, excellence in reporting is expected as a matter of continued ethical acceptability of animal use in the sciences. Our primary objective was to assess completeness of reporting for a series of studies relevant to mitigation of pain in neonatal piglets undergoing routine management procedures. Our second objective was to illustrate how authors can report the items in the Reporting guidElines For randomized controLled trials for livEstoCk and food safety (REFLECT) statement using examples from the animal welfare science literature. A total of 52 studies from 40 articles were evaluated using a modified REFLECT statement. No single study reported all REFLECT checklist items. Seven studies reported specific objectives with testable hypotheses. Six studies identified primary or secondary outcomes. Randomization and blinding were considered to be partially reported in 21 and 18 studies, respectively. No studies reported the rationale for sample sizes. Several studies failed to report key design features such as units for measurement, means, standard deviations, standard errors for continuous outcomes or comparative characteristics for categorical outcomes expressed as either rates or proportions. In the discipline of animal welfare science, authors, reviewers and editors are encouraged to use available reporting guidelines to ensure that scientific methods and results are adequately described and free of misrepresentations and inaccuracies. Complete and accurate reporting increases the ability to apply the results of studies to the decision-making process and prevent wastage of financial and animal resources.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of tenderness metrics in control groups used in comparative nutrition experiments

Abstract This review reports the pork quality attributes, Warner-Bratzler Shear Force, Slice Shear Force, Star Probe, pH, marbling, color (Minolta L*/L or Hunter L*/L), and sensory tenderness evaluation, in control groups used in comparative nutrition experiments over the past 20 yr. The original aim of this study was to evaluate if changes in pork quality based on the above metrics occurred over time. To address this question, it was anticipated that data may come from 3 sources with decreasing relevance: representative retail pork surveys, representative post-harvest carcass surveys, and control groups from comparative nutrition experiments. To identify the study population, a review of studies reported in Centre for Agricultural Biosciences International Abstracts (Web of Knowledge; 1994–2014) was conducted. Two national level surveys of retail pork and 146 relevant nutritional experiments studies, with 228 control groups, were identified by the search. It was not possible to conduct a meta-analysis of the retail pork surveys based on only 2 time points. For the comparative studies, a random effects meta-analysis was conducted with year as a covariate to assess the impact of time on the outcome. In the absence of modifiers, there was no evidence of meaningful change in the mean Warner-Bratzler Shear Force, pH, color, marbling, or sensory scores over the study period. There was evidence of substantial between-study heterogeneity in the characteristics of control pigs used over the years for Warner-Bratzler Shear Force and measures of color. The absence of publicly-available representative surveys of pork quality meant the changes in pork quality over time were not clear. If changes in pork quality have occurred, the data suggest that pigs used as controls in experiments may have become less representative of commercial pigs over time and the translatability of study findings from nutrition experiments might be reduced over time. Alternately, if commercial pigs have not changed, then control pigs reflect this. The study does not address if control groups in other experimental intervention studies had similar tenderness patterns as reported here for nutritional interventions. A large amount of potentially available data was excluded from the analysis due to incomplete reporting in the original study reports.

Authors' response to comments from Nachman KE et al.

Authors’ response to comments letter to the editor from Nachman KE et al.