The Harvest Initiative: On Farm Environmental Sampling For Organic Small Farms

<p>Demand for poultry and other agricultural products produced using alternative management practices is increasing. Within the U.S., organic food sales increased 4-fold between 2000 and 2010 and does not take into account other alternatively grown (e.g. all-natural, freerange, pastured) poultry products that are increasing in prevalence; therefore the overall influence of these alternatively grown poultry products may be greater than realized. Failure to address the gap in research addressing microbial safety of these products may result in preventable illnesses and setbacks in meeting goals of regulatory agencies to reduce food borne illness by 2020. The use of small, multi-commodity, AGP-free farms for sampling to permit methods evaluation, epidemiologic tracking of pathogens on farm, and microbiome analysis (to evaluate antimicrobial resistance genes (resistome), mobile genetic elements associated with movement of important gene targets (mobilome)) will help to provide a baseline census for media comparison and microbial communities, document the dynamics of known pathogens and associated antimicrobial resistance patters, identify emerging pathogens, and help evaluate specific interventions to improve animal and subsequently human health with respect to these emerging consumer products</p>