Transport stress--consequences for bacterial translocation, endogenous contamination and bactericidal activity of serum of slaughter pigs

On transport and at the abattoir animals are confronted with a lot of stressors, such as sound/noise, crowding/mixing, pollutants and infectious agents that act on the organism. After transport stress an endogenous contamination is often seen in slaughter carcasses and presents a hazard for the consumer. These events are often correlated with a rise in endotoxin level (Misawa et al., 1995; Morales et al., 1992) and a modified immune response. Previous own investigations confirm this hypothesis (Zucker and Krüger, 1998, Seidler et al., 2000). The attempt was made to investigate the impact of selected stressors (short term transport (1 h), long term transport (7-8 hrs), high temperature, high humidity and intense handling/moving) on bacterial translocation, endogenous contamination, endotoxin levels and bactericidal activity of body fluids.