FOOD SAFETY: FAO highlights ‘often neglected’ foodborne parasites.

 Officials have published a document highlighting ways to avoid the risks from foodborne parasites transmitted by pork, freshwater fish and crustaceans.

Foodborne parasitic diseases are often neglected in food safety control systems even though they can cause severe human health problems, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

One challenge is that affected animals might not show signs of disease, making it difficult for farmers and authorities to detect a problem. Also, if there are no production or financial losses associated with the parasite in animals, there is no incentive to control them.

The FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific publication reports different types of parasitic diseases can be transmitted to humans from pork, fish, freshwater crustaceans, vegetables, eggs of tapeworms, and protozoa.

Preventing human exposure to foodborne parasites can be the responsibility of a veterinary or food safety authority in some countries, while in others, there are no controls for parasites.

    Parasites from plants and meat

Fascioliasis is caused by two species of flatworms called Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica. It is acquired by eating raw plants such as watercress and other freshwater cultivated or wild plants, or by drinking contaminated water. It is mainly an animal disease but does occasionally affect people.

Young parasites can cause abdominal pain, fever and diarrhea. Once they reach the lungs, symptoms can include a chronic productive cough, chest pain, and sometimes fever. Signs can be similar to those of tuberculosis or lung cancer. Humans can be treated for adult flukes with triclabendazole.

Eating raw aquatic vegetable harvested from or near grazing lands should be avoided. Rinsing them is not enough and freezing is not recommended, according to the FAO. The parasite can be killed by cooking vegetables at 60 degrees C (140 degrees F) for several minutes. continue

AGRIBUSINESS: LIVER FLUKE IN CATTLE.

AGRIBUSINESS: LIVER FLUKE IN CATTLE. A liver fluke is a parasitic worm that commonly live off of cattle, sheep and other livestock.Cattle can pick them up while out at pasture, and if not treated can drastically affect their performance, and cause liver damage. The disease they cause is called fascioliasis. Cattle typically develop chronic disease and classically show loss of weight, condition and become anaemic. Liver fluke-related disease can become acute and even fatal.However, if the offending liver flukes mature into adult egg-laying parasites, it can lead to severe liver damage depending on the number. Cattle infected with liver fluke are considered to be more susceptible to other infections,that is why it is so important to deal with liver fluke early. HOW TO DEAL WITH LIVER FLUKE 1: IDENTIFY RISK If you are aware of high risk areas for liver fluke, then deal with them as soon as possible. Fence off wet areas, attend to leaky troughs and pipes, drainage or housing early.If you have lost any sheep, investigate this, as this can be an early indication of fluke risk for your cattle. 2: TREAT APPROPRIATELY Cattle cannot pick up liver fluke when they are housed, however if they are not, it has the potential to put their growth rates well below market weight. Correct treatment means using the right product, at the right time, using the correct dose rate and administering it the right way. Never underdose your cattle for liver fluke, and do not assume that one size fits all when you’re measuring doses. Base your measurement off your heaviest animal for a group of cattle. Do not overdose your cattle either as this can encourace resistance to liver fluke treatments. If you have a large variation in weights, group them to ensure an accurate dose rate. If the treatment comes in the form of an injection, ensure it goes under the skin and not into the muscle. 3: AVOID RESISTANCE Over-reliance or overdosing on a flukicide can lead to drug resistance growing in liver fluke.It is important that you have an effective plan for cattle that reduces the risk of resistance spreading. Treatment: Among the products that kill liver flukes are Ivomec® Plus (Merial); Valbazen® (Pfizer) and Noromectin® PLUS (Norbrook),triclobendazole, nitroxynil 34% and 3 Levanor plus.

AGRIBUSINESS: Climate change increasing the prevalence of harmful parasite.

AGRIBUSINESS: Climate change increasing the prevalence of harmful parasite.

A rise in a parasite called liver fluke, which can significantly impact livestock production in farms in the UK and across the world, could now be helped by a new predictive model of the disease aimed at farmers. 

 Cattle or sheep grazing on pastures where the parasite is present can become infected with liver fluke, which develops in the liver of infected animals, leading to a disease called fascioliasis. Current estimates suggest liver fluke contributes to around £300 million annually in lost productivity across UK farms and $3 billion globally.  

 Until now, risk predictions have been based on rainfall estimates and temperature, without considering the life-cycle of the parasite and how it is controlled by levels of soil moisture. 

This, combined with shifts in disease timing and distribution attributed to climate change, has made liver fluke control increasingly challenging. A new tool for farmers has now been developed by the Bristol team to help them mitigate the risk to their livestock. 

The model, which works by explicitly linking liver fluke prevalence with key environmental drivers, especially soil moisture, will help farmers decide whether they avoid grazing livestock on certain pastures where liver fluke is more prevalent, or treat animals based on when risk of infection will be at its peak. 

Importantly, the model can be used to assess the impact of potential future climate conditions on infection levels and guide interventions to reduce future disease risk. Professor Thorsten Wagener from Bristol's Cabot Institute added: "Water-related diseases can be difficult to eradicate using medicine alone, as resistance to available drugs is increasing. We need predictive models of disease risk that quantify how strongly infection risk is controlled by our rapidly changing environment to develop alternative intervention strategies."

Re-emerging zoonosis: Fascioliasis.

Re-emerging zoonosis are zoonotic infections that have been recognized before and has protocol measures of prevention and treatment in place,but now these infections have higher incidences and wider geographic scope.


Fascioliasis is one of such re-emerging zoonotic infections that was common in developing nations of Africa and sparse dispersion in America,Europe and Asia.

Today this infection is widespread and with higher prevalence. The food-borne trematodes causing infection in man are Fasciola hepatica and gigantica are the 2 most common in the tropics. Transmission is by ingestion of flukes in under-cooked or poorly processed liver.

 Drinking water contaminated with the flukes and eating water plants or vegetables washed with such water. Accidental ingestion of flukes from infected liver as shown below is very common in developing countries.

 Butchers usually cut up affected liver in strips to cut out the white tracts formed by the flukes. This is usually called Eedo oni ishan, they typically sell to food vendors and people who want meat that you chew for long before swallowing. The next time you visit your butcher and observe livers cut up with tracts,do not buy.

Acute phase. when the immature worms penetrate the intestinal wall and the peritoneum, the protective membrane surrounding the internal organs .
They puncture the liver's surface and eat their way through its tissues until they reach the bile ducts. This invasion kills the liver cells and causes intense internal bleeding.

Typical symptoms include fever, nausea, a swollen liver, skin rashes and extreme abdominal pain and inflammation. Chronic phase.
The chronic phase begins when the worms reach the bile ducts, where they mature and start producing eggs.
These eggs are released into the bile and reach the intestine, where they are evacuated in faeces, thereby completing the transmission cycle.

Symptoms include intermittent pain, jaundice and anaemia. Pancreatitis and gallstones. Patients with chronic infections experience hardening of the liver (fibrosis) as a result of the long-term.

 The fluke sometimes migrates from the liver to the eye and nervous tissue.

The migration causes neurological signs such as tremors/seizures .Ocular lesions arise from migration to the eyes, where there is occasional moving out of fluke from orbit.

welcome to my world.

hi, welcome. my name is dr(mrs)HB ojuri, my friends call me echbee. who is a vet? a vet, in local language an animal doctor, she is intrested in the well_being of your pets, livestock and also safety of mankind. A vet, is intrested in general health check of animals and man, so as not to confuse you, let me break it down, 1) public health, the vet makes sure that the animals to be slaughtered are fit for slaughter, by carrying out ante mortem inspection, upon slaughtering of the animals, thorough post mortem examination is carried out to ensure that the carcass is wholesome and fit for human consumption, after slaughtering is over she ensures that the carcasses get to the market in good conditions, by eneuring that theey are transported, in neat, well ventilated vans. what is the importance of these? this is how we take care of human beings, in fact in school, we were told that humans are our first patients. the exercise above is to keep out disease, that are meat-borne, or to say it properly, zoonotic diseases, what is a zoonotic disease,? this is a disease that can be transferred from animals to man and vice versa, important diseases include, tuberculosis, fascioliasis, these we will discuss fully. DO YOU KNOW THAT TUBERCULOSIS, SUPPRESSESS THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, HENCE ALLOWS FOR OTHER INFECTIONS.