Various chemical hazards are identified and characterised. Public health risks associated with ingestion of contaminated animal food products are discussed, options for risk mitigation are presented.

Studying animals in the environment may be a realistic and highly beneficial approach to identifying unknown chemical contaminants before they cause human harm. Animals as Sentinels of Environmental Health Hazards presents an overview of animal-monitoring programs, including detailed case studies of how animal health problemsâ€"such as the effects of DDT on wild bird populationsâ€"have led researchers to the sources of human health hazards. The authors examine the components and characteristics required for an effective animal-monitoring program, and they evaluate numerous existing programs, including in situ research, where an animal is placed in a natural setting for monitoring purposes.

The use of drugs in food animal production has resulted in benefits throughout the food industry; however, their use has also raised public health safety concerns. The Use of Drugs in Food Animals provides an overview of why and how drugs are used in the major food-producing animal industriesâ€"poultry, dairy, beef, swine, and aquaculture. The volume discusses the prevalence of human pathogens in foods of animal origin. It also addresses the transfer of resistance in animal microbes to human pathogens and the resulting risk of human disease. The committee offers analysis and insight into these areas: Monitoring of drug residues. The book provides a brief overview of how the FDA and USDA monitor drug residues in foods of animal origin and describes quality assurance programs initiated by the poultry, dairy, beef, and swine industries. Antibiotic resistance. The committee reports what is known about this controversial problem and its potential effect on human health. The volume also looks at how drug use may be minimized with new approaches in genetics, nutrition, and animal management.

While systems such as GMP and HACCP assure a high standard of food quality, foodborne poisonings still pose a serious hazard to the consumer's health. The lack of knowledge among some producers and consumers regarding the risks and benefits related to food makes it imperative to provide updated information in order to improve food safety. To

One Health (OH) is the conceptual and operational framework that links environment, food-producing organisms and human health. OH is a developing field, that deals with the multifaceted web of feed-backs and interactions among its components. In order to avoid “drowning into complexity”, priority issues should be identified, either for research and for risk analysis. To date OH approaches have frequently pivoted on infectious agents shared among animals and humans and the related problems, such as antibiotic resistance. Nevertheless, the OH scenarios include, and should increasingly include, environment-and-health problems. Food and environment do interact. Environment influences the living organisms that produce human food and, in the meanwhile, food production outputs influence the environmental quality; as for foods of animal origin, feed materials and practices are driving components of the environment-food interactions. In this book, we aimed at highlighting the importance of environment, chemical exposures and toxicological issues in the field of OH, as well as the need for multidisciplinary integration in order to support OH approaches into diseases prevention and health promotion.