These kinds of payoffs are still very much to be pursued, of course, and increased product market competition in a new free trade era adds to pressures for cost-saving technological advances. The application of modern electronics, materials, and biological research findings to farm production continue to increase the cognitive skill requirements of many farm jobs. Gradual replacement of strenuous harvest, cultivation, and carrying jobs with machine operation, sorting, and maintenance work can be expected to both reduce total employment and increase the average duration of careers in farm work.The legal environment of the labor supply and labor management is a persistent source of uncertainty clouding the outlook for business operators. Frustration with regulatory demands is already strong and widespread, and incentives for reducing direct payroll continue to accrue. As long as the body politic sees farm workers hurting, legislators will be moved to consider further regulation of agricultural employers. But each new law begins another experiment that touches off adjustments in labor procurement that no one can be sure of in advance. Most mandates and restrictions have encouraged farmers to shift away from employing and toward more contracting of labor. Recent initiatives that have been designed specifically to tighten control of labor contractors and to increase customers’ liability for FLC acts, however, push in the opposite direction. Despite regulatory pressures and anticipated technological changes,commercial drying racks there is no foreseeable vision of a California agriculture without seasonal and short-term tasks that many farm operators would rather have performed by contractors.
The two tiers of agricultural jobs apparent today may become increasingly divided and aligned with different types of employers, the more secure and higher paying jobs tending to cluster within farm businesses and the less desirable, “contingent” jobs in contractor firms. Farm operators arc likely to regard the higher costs of direct employment much more bearable for employees who possess rare skills or who perform jobs that arc individually critical to business success.Although most farm operators do not have faith in the Employment Service as a worthy broker between them and farm workers, there is definitely room, if not also strong need, for the EDD to facilitate transactions in the agricultural labor market. To serve the function of matching farm work wild people more effectively in the current and foreseeable environment requires that the ES go beyond the practice of simply sending available workers to employers who have job openings. Two welcome additions to its line of service would be contractor referral and worker assessment. Farm operators would make good use of an accessible, reliable third-party source of referrals to labor contractors in their locales. In procuring labor from a contractor, farmers remove themselves from numerous recruitment and selection decisions, but they take on instead a kind of wholesale hiring decision that has greater stakes than any single employee hire. Because the consequences of the search for and choice of an outside service provider arc so magnified, information relevant to these processes can be extremely valuable.Potential for invigorating the public Employment Service lies not only in expanding its referral domain but also in adding value to its traditional referral of individual workers. Farmers naturally want to make good employee selection decisions, but the quality of their hires is limited by that of their recruitment pools and the information they can gamer about applicants’ qualifications, Managerial resources for carefully recruiting and screening workers are often insufficient, however, especially in smaller and mid’size farm businesses.
If the ES could provide some objective assessment of a worker’s knowledge and skills in relation to specified job requirements, it would surely cam higher regard and more activity as a recruitment channel. The garden variety referral remains tainted by its recognized connection to the unemployment insurance program. When the Employment Service does not distinguish meaningfully among workers on the basis of their qualifications for respective jobs, it passes up the opportunity to furnish assistance that many farm operators need. Moreover, it implies a working belief that all farm jobs are “unskilled,” and it may substantiates the opinions that most farmers express about the ES. In an agricultural industry that takes advantage of increasingly sophisticated technologies, pre-employment assessment of worker abilities will be all the m”re significant. Tooling up to substantilly support employee selection on the farm would not be easily accomplished, but it would translate into more productive and mutu”lIy satisfying employment relationships. ln addition, worker “sscssments would improve labor procurement options for f”rm employers by lowering costs and risks of direct hiring and of selling some of the impetus to contract with external providers.Human-mediated introduction of pathogens through the release of captively reared animals presents a risk to susceptible wildlife populations and is an important consideration for wildlife introduction programs. High host density in captive-rearing conditions can facilitate pathogen transmission as well as indirectly increase disease susceptibility of individuals when captive conditions are stressful . Captive-rearing conditions are often studied from the perspective of protecting domesticated species from wildlife, but the impacts of disease on wildlife populations are not generally considered in the context of releasing animals reared in captivity. Health surveillance of individuals prior to release can reduce the potential of disease spreading to naïve wildlife, as well as increase the effectiveness of target population augmentation . Pathogen transmission risk to wildlife from game birds reared in captivity and then released into novel wildlife habitats is not well known , but pathogen transmission between wild birds, backyard poultry and commercial poultry is relatively well-documented . In California, recent outbreaks of virulent Newcastle disease in backyard and commercial poultry flocks as well as previous outbreaks that have spread to commercial poultry exemplify the potential for disease in small backyard flocks to spill over to the commercial poultry industry.
Similarly, detection of avian influenza A virus in waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway as well as in commercial poultry in California demonstrates how pathogens can spread between wildlife and larger-scale commercial poultry. However, game bird farms are unique in that the majority of birds produced are released into the wild. Although most previous outbreaks associated with farm-raised pheasants and other game birds have been documented in Europe , these outbreaks demonstrated the vulnerability of avian wildlife to infectious diseases carried by released domestic birds. Therefore, the release of game birds reared in captivity such as ring-necked pheasants may facilitate conditions by which disease agents can be released into the environment . Pheasants have a long history of facilitated introductions to novel environments across Europe and North America . Statewide hunter harvest of wild pheasants in California was more than one million birds per year in the 1960s but is currently less than one hundred thousand . Concomitant stressors including habitat loss, habitat degradation and increased pesticide application attributed to agricultural intensification across the state have led to precipitous declines in wild pheasant populations . Hence, wildlife managers tend to purchase and release captive-bred pheasants with three immediate goals in mind: provide hunters with more opportunities to harvest pheasants by releasing them just before the hunting season,rolling grow table supplement hunted populations by releasing pen-reared pheasants after the hunting season and establish new populations as necessary . To this end, tens of thousands of pen-reared ring-necked pheasants are released onto private hunting clubs and public wildlife areas in the Central Valley of California annually . Captive-bred game birds including pheasants are commonly raised outdoors in wire pens, which creates the potential for birds raised in captivity to come in contact with wildlife and potentially increase the wildlife-livestock disease interface . For example, vegetation is often allowed to grow in the pens for cover, creating perching substrate for small wild birds. Additionally, shared parasites between captive-bred and wild game birds such as Heterakis gallinarum have been previously reported to negatively influence host body condition , which can exacerbate other challenges to the survival of released game birds such as increased predator abundance and lower disease resistance . Monitoring of pathogen prevalence in game bird breeding operations can help inform game bird breeders of the health of their flocks while elucidating potential reservoirs of disease. Avian diseases that have been reported in wild and commercially raised pheasants are described in Appendix S1. This study measured potential for pathogen exposure using serological surveillance from sampled pheasants among three different sources including pen-reared pheasants within game bird breeding farms, pen-reared pheasants that were previously released onto wild lands in which wild pheasant populations occurred and wild pheasants on public and private hunting areas within northern California.
The main objective was to compare differences in pathogen exposure between groups of pheasants based on evidence of antibody response from serological tests. In wild and pen-reared pheasant populations, we carried out surveillance for bacterial and viral pathogens that were previously reported in wild and commercially raised pheasants .Pen-reared pheasants were sampled at seven game bird breeding farms located across five counties within the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley during 2015–2017. A pilot effort was carried out during the first two years of the study to test sampling methodologies. Findings from the pilot study were published in Dwight et al., . Farms were named based on the California county in which the premises were located. Birds were purchased from or donated by game bird breeders for diagnostic testing, and up to ten pheasants from each farm were tested in a given year. Approximately 1–2 ml of blood was taken from the cutaneous ulnar vein using a 3 ml syringe. All blood samples were stored upright in serum separator tubes in a cooler or refrigerator prior to being spun-down in a centrifuge within 48 hr of collection, and serum taken from these samples was kept in 1 ml Nalgene™ long-term storage cryogenic tubes at −80°C prior to performing diagnostic tests. All tests were performed at the California Animal Health and Food Safety diagnostic laboratory in Turlock, California. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were used to test for antibody titres against AIV, paramyxovirus type 1 , infectious bursal disease virus , Pasteurella multocida , haemorrhagic enteritis virus and infectious laryngotracheitis virus . The micro-agglutination test was used to detect antibodies specific to Salmonella enterica serovar Pullorum . Titre group cutoffs for a positive or negative result were based on test manufacturer specifications. The AIV, PMV-1, IBDV and ILT ELISA tests were validated for chicken species, while the HEV and PM kits were validated for turkey species. The sensitivity and specificity of these tests in closely related avian species such as pheasants is unknown.Wild pheasants were sampled across six study sites in northern California during 2015–2017: Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area , Gray Lodge Wildlife Area , Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area , Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge , Roosevelt Ranch Duck Club and Mandeville Island Duck Club . Yolo Bypass, Gray Lodge and Upper Butte were state-managed wildlife areas that released pen-reared pheasants in differing quantities during each year that we sampled wild pheasants at these sites. Lower Klamath was a federally managed wildlife refuge that did not release pheasants during the years in which wild pheasants were sampled. The two privately owned hunting clubs, Roosevelt Ranch and Mandeville Island, were both primarily managed for waterfowl hunting but offered pheasant hunting opportunities as well. Roosevelt Ranch did not release pheasants during the study period, while Mandeville Island released several thousand pen-reared pheasants each year of the study in an effort to augment the population post-harvest. Roosevelt Ranch was assumed to have an entirely wild population, and the pheasant population at Mandeville Island was assumed to be mostly pen-reared and released birds. However, birds sampled at Mandeville Island that hatched from nests initiated by previously released birds were considered naturalized and categorized as wild. Pheasants sampled from our study sites included both wild pheasants and previously released pen-reared pheasants.Blood samples collected in the field were stored upright in serum separator tubes in a cooler with ice or refrigerator prior to being spun-down in a centrifuge. Previously released pen-reared pheasants sampled at wild pheasant study sites could not be linked back to the farm of origin, but physically distinguishable characteristics such as a clipped toe or leg band allowed us to differentiate previously released pen-reared birds from wild birds.