Animal Diseases and How It Affects Humans - Thesis Proposal Example

Introduction Besides the massive effect on the environment and animal safety, the growth of animal domestication has generated new ways for disease to thrive and endanger the health of human beings. Interactions between human beings and animals have constantly meant risk of contagious disease. But the growing reliance on and utilization of animal resources, that has taken place through the expansion of animal domestication, has implied that the possibilities of disease which were not present, or were unlikely, four or five decades ago are presently widespread. Basically, the growth of livestock production has resulted in the expansion of possibilities for the spread of disease. The methods of animal domestication, particularly the living and housing conditions of highly domesticated animals considerably create risks of exposure to disease-carrying organisms. The risks of disease can be prevented or lessened with proper techniques of animal domestication. Unfortunately, management of animal resources is largely tied to sustaining or boosting efficiency or output. Before, cattleman could care for animals more thoroughly. Nowadays, the number of cattlemen is not just fewer, but they are also obliged to attend to massive numbers of domesticated animals as cost efficiently and productively as possible. The decrease in the number of workforce in livestock farming alongside the escalating production of domesticated animals can result in poor hygiene and disease management which, consequently, may lead to the spread of communicable disease among the domesticated animals and perhaps even transmission to human beings in the immediate vicinity. There is also the possibility of diseased animal protein contaminating the food chain and threatening the health of human beings. A particular disease control practice used in rigorous animal domestication is to recognize the commonness of disease or the chronic presence of viruses. Vaccinations and antibiotic medicines are hence regularly given in order to maintain the health and productivity of domesticated animals. When disease epidemics take place, it may not be feasible to harvest stock because of the sheer size of the population of domesticated animals. Likewise, cattle houses may have been inadequately built and cannot be correctly or thoroughly sanitized, and the animal’s body wastes may threaten the health of both animals and human beings. Disease control entirely through medication is far from successful. Furthermore, it raises substantial public concern about the cleanliness or safety of the animal products which are consumed by humans. The application of growth hormones and the potential adverse impacts of the remains of veterinary medicine have become a growing source of public concern recently. For roughly five decades now, antibiotics have been injected into animal feeds with the purpose of enhancing growth and productivity. During the past decades, experts have explored the likelihood of ‘resistance risks’, and eventually the European community had initiated attempts to prohibit the use of antibiotics as enhancers of animal growth. Nowadays, the problem of resistant risks has once more emerged as the focus of scientific and political discourse, encouraged partly by the introduction of ‘avoparcin’, a veterinary antibiotic which is directly associated with ‘vancomycin’, a major human medical antibiotic. There is a fear that these veterinary antibiotics may encourage the formation of bacterial strains that have a natural immunity to antibiotics. Even though these is presently weak microbiological evidence or agreement on this issue, a number of experts have still argued that the prevalent application of antibiotics in animal domestication, especially those administered to cure diseases, could be the source of immune strains of campylobacter and salmonella that are being discovered in numerous cases of food poisoning in humans. Recently, the issue of animal disease management has also been addressed from another perspective, that instead of trying to change the animals’ living and housing conditions, try to transform the domesticated animals themselves. Within this perspective, efforts have been initiated to raise strains of least disease-prone animals which are housed in well controlled settings. Nowadays, poultry herds can be reared to be immune to certain diseases, which basically imply that certain disease-breeding agents have been eradicated by reproducing and raising poultry in a germ-free state. Nevertheless, this segregation can make poultry flocks susceptible to other bacteria that may otherwise have been harmless. Contemporary animal domestication is a hazardous enterprise and at times it is the health of human beings that is at risk. Despite of the efforts of the industry to generate animal goods that are safe for human use, animal disease remains a major hazard to human health. The amplification of poultry-raising is primarily responsible for bacterial contagion in human beings. Disease caused by salmonella is one of the persistent risks of broiler-raising. It is actually well established that salmonella will always be present in poultry flocks, even though it can be controlled by proper housing and feeding methods. The commonness of this microorganism in poultry stock is mostly because of unhygienic feeding practices. Rigorously raised poultry, similar to other domesticated animals which can transmit the microorganism salmonella, are usually given high-protein fodders which can carry animal by-products like excreta or dung. If these fodders are poorly sanitized, bacteria can survive and can be transmitted to other animals. The process of sterilization is expensive. Yet, subjecting animal foods to heat treatment is not constantly effective because salmonella strains have developed which are resistant to high temperature and persist to infect animal food. The spread of salmonella involves “the transfer of faeces or intestinal contents from an infected individual to the digestive tract of a susceptible one”. Salmonella can also be transmitted to human beings through the consumption of infected animal products. The microorganism can bring about focal illness, septic shock disorder, gastroenteritis in human beings, and even be lethal to at risk groups, like the elderly and newborns. It must be stressed that proper sanitation and appropriate cooking procedures can lessen the possibility of disease for human consumers. Yet, the contemporary techniques of animal domestication and transportation of huge numbers of farm animals enhance the risks of cross-contagion and the contamination of animal products for human consumption. Even though salmonella is the most widespread bacterial disease, it is not the only disease which could infect human beings. Toxoplasmosis, clostridial toxicosis, staphylococcal enterotoxicosis, campylobacteriosis, trichinosis, brucellosis, and bovine tuberculosis may be passed on through infected animal feeds and bring about human disease. Read More