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Background and objectives: Consumption of chicken meat has been suggested as a cause of transmission of ESBL/AmpC-producing E.coli. All stages in the production of broilers are significant with regards to the contamination of the final chicken products. The objective of this work is to create a model for the spread of ESBL/AmpC producing E.coli involving the “farm stage” of the supply chain.
Materials and methods: Markov Chain principle implying that the percentage positive flocks at a particular point in the chain depend on the percentage in the previous point of the chain is applied.
Results: The model developed here describes the effects of vertical and horizontal transmission, as well as effects of inactivation and removal of bacteria and the dynamic of growth and cross-contamination in terms of the transfer of ESBL/AmpC producing E.coli from other infected broilers (in the same flock, in other flock within the same farm and in the previous production cycle). Three main steps are considered here: parent flocks; one-day old chicks; broilers. The same basic considerations are applied in each consecutive stage taking into account the different factors affecting each stage.
Conclusions: The output values of this “farm model” will be used as input for the poultry processing model for quantitative risk assessment. Moreover, knowledge about the epidemiology of ESBLs/AmpC at the farm level may be of great value for the design of effective prevention and control strategies.