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Sampling considerations for herd-level measurement of faecal Escherichia coli antimicrobial resistance in finisher
R H Dunlop1, S A McEwen, A H Meek
1Department of Population Medicine, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract:
The objective of this study was to determine the most efficient means of sampling faeces of finisher pigs for accurate and precise farm-level estimates of antimicrobial resistance among faecal Escherichia coli. Resistance to tetracycline and gentamicin of 8250 isolates of E. coli from 55 finisher pigs on one farm was measured with a hydrophobic grid membrane filter method. The between-pig, within-pen component of variance in resistance was large (97.5%), while between-pen, within-room and between-room components were small (2.5% and 0%, respectively). Using these resistance data, the abilities of two sampling strategies to estimate prevalence were modelled with a Monte Carlo 'bootstrap' procedure. Compositing faecal samples from several pigs before testing produced unbiased and precise estimates of prevalence and is simpler technically than individual animal testing.
