Getting Technical

I grew up on a cow-calf farm about and from a young age was helping with the cows, whether it was checking during calving, or pushing calves at branding. I'm not sure if it's something I always had, or something I learned, by my teens I'd developed a pretty good instinct for my herd. I remember specifically one year this cow of ours was calving and for some reason I just didn't feel right about it, later on that night my dad pulled dead twins from her. King Ralph was my first 4-H calf, and I'll admit I cried when I sold him, however life and death are part of farm life and most of us learn to accept that. By my early 20's I had realized that the chances of me settling into my own farm life were pretty slim and I started to think about different ways I could be involved in agriculture. I am now a technician for a Beef Scientist at Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development and I have to say for the most part I love my job.

We do quite a bit of work at local feedlots and I really enjoy being out in the community, its been a great way to make new contacts and learn a new side of the Alberta beef industry.

The majority of our work involves food safety, more specifically E. coli O157:H7, a bacteria which can lead to what is commonly known as hamburger disease. As few as 8-10 bacteria cells are enough to infect a human, and infection may lead to a wide range of symptoms, from diarrhea to kidney failure. However its important to remember that proper food safety precautions will protect you and your family from contracting this bacteria from your beef!

Cattle act as a reservoir for this bacteria, fortunately for them it does not make them sick like humans can get, however this makes it difficult to identify which cattle are hosts. To additionally complicate things there are MANY other strains of E. coli in their intestines (and yes, yours!) that are part of their normal digestive system. So how do we determine which animals are E. coli O157:H7 positive you ask? Well...like this...

As I already mentioned, this bacteria is part of the 'digestive system'...and as we all know what goes in, must come out! Additionally since fed cattle are often housed together, one infected animal can cause quite a bit of what we call 'environmental contamination'...so we also test their pen floors, their water...

AND their hides...

Betcha never thought people were actually paid to wipe cow's bums did ya!

Looks pretty easy but when you are trying to do this all in the time it take the feedlot to give a needle and check an ear tag...well lets just say its an art.

While feedlot research is important, it can sometimes be challenging to gather information without interfering with the business. Science demands that research be done in a controlled manner (ha ha!), so sometimes we do smaller scale projects on site. This is me pretending to be a steer infected with E. coli O157:H7, the idea was to get a better grasp on how one infected animal can cause its pen mates to become infected as well.

So that's what I do in a nutshell...its pretty great most of the time, but then I've never minded getting dirty or stinky! I am happy that I have found a way to be a hands on part of the industry and I hope in some small way the work I do makes this industry stronger and safer.