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This review is aimed at summarizing the current state of knowledge about the relationship between environmental exposure to the bioaerosol emitted by intensive livestock farming and changes in the microbiome of people living in livestock farm vicinity. The PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases were searched by crossing keywords from the following 3 groups: a) "livestock," "animal farms," "animal breeding"; b) "microbiome," "resistome"; c) "livestock vicinity," "farm vicinity," "neighborhoods and health" in 2010-2022. Literature screening did not reveal any paper related to the full microbiome composition in the population studied. In the study, the authors included 7 papers (5 from the Netherlands, 1 from the USA, and 1 from China). The studies confirmed the carriage of Staphylococcus aureus, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), livestockassociated MRSA (LA-MRSA MC398) and multidrug-resistant S. aureus (MDRSA) in the nasal microbiome of adults and children living within 500-2000 m from a livestock farm. Clostridium difficile, including LA-ribotype RT078 carriage, was detected in the intestinal microbiome of adults living within 500-1000 m. Extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) producing Enterobacteriaceae were confirmed in the intestinal microbiome of adults living within 500-6200 m. Knowledge on the composition of the microflora of people living in livestock farm vicinity is insufficient to conclude about changes in the microbiome caused by the environmental emission of bioaerosol. The carriage prevalence of the LA-bacteria, including both strains with antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial resistance genes, confirms the presence of zoonotic bacteria in the human microflora in populations without occupational contact with animals. It cannot be ruled out that zoonotic bacteria, as a component of the microbiome, have a negative impact on people's health. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2024;37(2):138-52. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cattle were the predominant domestic animal in the Iron Age and Roman Netherlands, yet their management is still incompletely understood. Some aspects of cattle management, such as birth season and the provision of fodder, have received little or no attention so far. This paper is the first to investigate these aspects for the Iron Age and Roman Netherlands, through a case study of the site of Houten-Castellum. The rural settlement of Houten-Castellum was inhabited from the Middle Iron Age to the Middle Roman period, allowing a comparison between the Iron Age and Roman period. Excavations at this site have yielded a large, well-preserved animal bone assemblage. This paper investigates cattle husbandry by using an integrated approach, combining a multi-isotope analysis (oxygen, carbon and strontium) with archaeozoological and archaeobotanical results from Houten-Castellum and comparing the results with archaeobotanical evidence for fodder and evidence for dairy use for the Iron Age and Roman Netherlands in general. While our data set is small and results must therefore be interpreted cautiously, there is convincing evidence for an extended birth season in the Middle Iron Age, as well as the use of fodder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archaeological sites of Hardinxveld-Giessendam de Bruin and Polderweg, situated in the Rhine-Meuse delta, are the best-preserved Mesolithic sites in the Netherlands. Due to the early appearance of domesticated animals in their faunal assemblage, they are also integral to the research of the emergence of animal husbandry in the region. This study focuses on the precise chronology of the sites, using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling of both newly acquired and legacy radiocarbon dates. To mitigate the risk of erroneous dates, we dated the bone collagen of 26 herbivorous and one aquatic mammals from clear archaeological contexts and discovered that the most recent occupational phases at both sites are several centuries younger than previously thought. This is consistent with material evidence of lifestyle changes in the final phase at Hardinxveld-Giessendam de Bruin, which is now, according to our chronology, contemporaneous with the similar patterns produced in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livestock management involves the monitoring of farm animals by tracking certain physiological and phenotypical characteristics over time. In the dairy industry, for instance, cattle are typically equipped with RFID ear tags. The corresponding data (e.g. milk properties) can then be automatically assigned to the respective cow when they enter the milking station. In order to move towards a more scalable, affordable, and welfare-friendly approach, automatic non-invasive solutions are more desirable. Thus, a non-invasive approach is proposed in this paper for the automatic identification of individual Holstein cattle from the side view while exiting a milking station. It considers input images from a thermal-RGB camera. The thermal images are used to delineate the cow from the background. Subsequently, any occluding rods from the milking station are removed and inpainted with the fast marching algorithm. Then, it extracts the RGB map of the segmented cattle along with a novel CORF3D contour map. The latter contains three contour maps extracted by the Combination of Receptive Fields (CORF) model with different strengths of push–pull inhibition. This mechanism suppresses noise in the form of grain type texture. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by means of experiments using a 5-fold and a leave-one day-out cross-validation on a new data set of 3694 images of 383 cows collected from the Dairy Campus in Leeuwarden (the Netherlands) over 9 days. In particular, when combining RGB and CORF3D maps by late fusion, an average accuracy of 99. 64 % (± 0. 13) was obtained for the 5-fold cross validation and 99. 71 % (± 0. 31) for the leave-one day-out experiment. The two maps were combined by first learning two ConvNet classification models, one for each type of map. The feature vectors in the two FC layers obtained from training images were then concatenated and used to learn a linear SVM classification model. In principle, the proposed approach with the novel CORF3D contour maps is suitable for various image classification applications, especially where grain type texture is a confounding variable. • We propose a non-invasive and vision-based approach for Holstein cattle recognition. • It is based on a single shot that captures an RGB and a thermal image simultaneously. • It uses novel CORF3D contour maps that suppress noise surrounding salient contours. • A new data set of 3694 images and 383 cows was collected and used for evaluation. • we achieve an average accuracy of 99.71% (±0.31) with leave-on day-out cross validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Conflicts with wolves arise because wolves kill farm animals, especially sheep, or approach humans. It is expected that young wolves learn from their parent pack (PP) what their prey is and if it is safe to be near humans. To confirm this, we researched whether the behavior of young migrating wolves (loners), after they leave the pack, resembles PP behavior. Fourteen loners entering the Netherlands between 2015 and 2019 could be identified and genetically linked to their PPs. Loner and PP behavior was similar in 10 out of 14 cases. Like their PPs, some young wolves killed sheep and were near humans, others killed sheep and did not approach humans, while two loners were unproblematic, they did not kill sheep nor were they in proximity to humans. Thus, the PP behavior did predict loner's behavior and conflicts may be similar between young wolves and their PPs. However, conflicts need not arise. To achieve that, new prevention methods are proposed to teach wolves in the PP not to approach sheep and humans. As a result, new generations may not be problematic when leaving the PP. Transmission of experience about prey and habitat supports the survival of next generation of wolves. Thus, the parent pack (PP) can affect whether young migrating wolves (loners) kill farm animals or choose to be in human environments, which generates human–wolf conflicts. Therefore, we researched whether the behavior of loners resembles PP behavior. After being extinct, 22 loners had entered the Netherlands between 2015 and 2019. Among them, 14 could be DNA-identified and linked with their PPs in Germany. Some loners were siblings. We assessed the behavior of each individual and PP through a structured Google search. PP behavior was determined for the loner's rearing period. Similarity between loner and PP behavior was significant (p = 0.022) and applied to 10 of 14 cases: like their PPs, three loners killed sheep and were near humans, five killed sheep and did not approach humans, while two loners were unproblematic, they did not kill sheep, nor were they near humans. Siblings behaved similarly. Thus, sheep killing and proximity to humans may develop during early-life experiences in the PP. However, by negative reinforcement that can be prevented. New methods are suggested to achieve that. As a result, new generations may not be problematic when leaving PPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]