Dairy Worker, Cow and Environmental Staphylococcus Presence on Washington State Dairy Farms

Abstract

The “One Health” paradigm embraces the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between multiple fields of study for a more comprehensive approach to the complex issues of interconnected human, animal and environmental health. This paper examines Staphylococcus bacteria presence or absence in samples from dairy workers, cows, and the environment across five dairy farms. with a focus on carriage by workers, and risk factors for such carriage. The farms are included large conventional farms (Type 1) and small organic farms (Type 2). Three different hypotheses were tested in this study. The first was whether there are differences in the frequency of Staphylococcus between samples of worker, cows and environments. Second, whether there was any difference in rates of Staphylococcus carriage by workers between Type 1 and Type 2 dairy farms. Third, whether any reported risk factors including infection control behavior correlated with the presence of Staphylococcus on the hands of dairy workers. While the study did not find statistically significant differences regarding these 3 hypotheses, it did reveal that the majority of workers on conventional dairy farms have 12 years of education or less, are White Hispanic and mostly do not raw cow’s milk, while the majority of workers on organic dairy farms have over 12 years of education, are White non-Hispanic and have a high rate of raw milk consumption. Suggestions for further investigations of these issues are presented. Based on study findings and literature review, I also present a risk assessment and risk management paradigm for approaching infection prevention and control in animal agriculture.