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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Athens, Georgia » U.S. National Poultry Research Center » Egg and Poultry Production Safety Research Unit » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #377039
Research Project: Reduction of Invasive Salmonella enterica in Poultry through Genomics, Phenomics and Field Investigations of Small Multi-Species Farm Environments

Location: Egg and Poultry Production Safety Research Unit

Title: Using farm management practices to predict campylobacter prevalence in pastured poultry farm

Author
item XU, XINRAN - University Of Georgia
item Rothrock, Michael
item MOHAN, ADNAN - University Of Georgia
item KUMAR, GOVINDARAJ - University Of Georgia
item MISHRA, ABHINIAV - University Of Georgia

Submitted to: Environmental Research
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/26/2021
Publication Date: 3/11/2021
Citation: Xu, X., Rothrock Jr, M.J., Mohan, A., Kumar, G.D., Mishra, A. 2021. Using farm management practices to predict campylobacter prevalence in pastured poultry farm. Environmental Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2021.101122.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2021.101122

Interpretive Summary: Contamination of poultry products by Campylobacter is often associated with farm management practices and processing plant practices. A longitudinal study was conducted on 11 pastured poultry farms in southeastern United States from 2014 to 2017. In this study, farm practices and processing variables were used as predictors for a random forest (RF) model to predict Campylobacter prevalence in pastured poultry farms and processing environments. Individual RF models were constructed for fecal, soil and whole carcass rinse after processing (WCP-P) samples. The performance of models was evaluated by the area under curve (AUC) from the receiver operating characteristics curve. The AUC values were 0.902, 0.894 and 0.864 for fecal, soil and WCR-P models, respectively. Relative importance plots were generated to predict the most important variable in each RF model. Animal source of feces was identified as the most important variable in fecal model and the soy content of the brood feed was the most important variable for soil model. For WCR-P model, the average flock age showed the strongest impact on RF model. These RF models can help pastured poultry growers with food safety control strategies to reduce Campylobacter prevalence in pastured poultry farms.

Technical Abstract: Contamination of poultry products by Campylobacter is often associated with farm management practices and processing plant practices. A longitudinal study was conducted on 11 pastured poultry farms in southeastern United States from 2014 to 2017. In this study, farm practices and processing variables were used as predictors for a random forest (RF) model to predict Campylobacter prevalence in pastured poultry farms and processing environments. Individual RF models were constructed for fecal, soil and whole carcass rinse after processing (WCP-P) samples. The performance of models was evaluated by the area under curve (AUC) from the receiver operating characteristics curve. The AUC values were 0.902, 0.894 and 0.864 for fecal, soil and WCR-P models, respectively. Relative importance plots were generated to predict the most important variable in each RF model. Animal source of feces was identified as the most important variable in fecal model and the soy content of the brood feed was the most important variable for soil model. For WCR-P model, the average flock age showed the strongest impact on RF model. These RF models can help pastured poultry growers with food safety control strategies to reduce Campylobacter prevalence in pastured poultry farms.