Human–livestock contacts and their relationship to transmission of zoonotic pathogens, a systematic review of literature

Klous, Gijs; Huss, Anke; Heederik, Dick J.J.; Coutinho, Roel A.

We identified 75 articles discussing micro-organism transmission or infections due to livestock associated micro-organisms. For people with occupational contact with livestock, the risk of acquiring microorganisms from livestock was especially elevated, since transmission of infections seems to be possible during all phases of the livestock production cycle; from stables until the slaughterhouse [103] . Among the papers discussing occupational exposure to livestock, we found only two studies that assessed livestock contact quantitatively. These papers crudely estimated the number of hours spent among infected animals [48] , or the number of tasks for handling infected animals [61] . A more detailed exposure assessment tackling concentration, exposure duration and frequency [104] , however, is lacking.