Bench-Scale Pig Buildings: Validation of a Model for Studying Airborne Contaminants of Concern for Human and Animal Health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Highlights Bench-scale pig buildings are suitable for studying airborne contaminants of commercial pig buildings. Multi-replicate designed experiments are possible using bench-scale pig buildings (experimental chambers). Strategies to reduce airborne contaminants may be developed in a timely and cost-effective way using the chambers. Abstract. Pig buildings produce and emit large amounts of airborne contaminants into the environment. Odors, gases, dust, and bioaerosols are responsible for the emergence of infectious, toxic, and inflammatory diseases diagnosed in animals, workers, and surrounding communities. There is therefore a need for better characterization and mitigation of airborne contaminants in commercial pig buildings. Bench-scale pig buildings could be used for the development and evaluation of reduction strategies for airborne contaminants in a timely and cost-effective manner before scaling them up for commercial use. Six bench-scale pig buildings were designed for growing animals (commercial diet and fully slatted concrete floor) and for producing odors, gases, dust, and bioaerosols from various sources (e.g., feed, manure) and animal activities. The validation of the six identical, environmentally controlled, independently ventilated and sealed bench-scale pig buildings (7.1 m3, 42 air changes per hour) is reported here. The validation implied inter-building and longitudinal (between week) comparisons of concentrations of airborne contaminants. Environmental conditions, methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonia (NH3), and airborne microorganisms (total bacteria and archaea, Clostridium perfringens, Enterococcus spp., and Escherichia coli) were monitored for seven weeks in the six bench-scale pig buildings. The experiment was repeated three times. From week to week, data analysis showed that environmental conditions, gases, odors, and airborne microbial concentrations were non-statistically different between buildings. By the end of the seven-week experiment, concentrations of N2O, NH3, Enterococcus, E. coli, and archaea were higher than during week 1 in all buildings (p < 0.05). Airborne gases, odors, and microbial concentrations were equivalent to those found during the Canadian summer in commercial finishing pig buildings. In conclusion, the designed bench-scale pig buildings may serve for multi-replicate experiments and for studying airborne contaminants found in commercial pig buildings. Keywords: Airborne contaminant, Bioaerosols, Dust, Gas, Odor, Pig building.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".