Research
Focus
Research activity is aimed on evaluation of stress indices in food animals, particularly during their transport and pre-slaughter manipulation. Research studies are focused on the effects of transport distance and year season on mortality in transported beef and dairy cattle, calves, pigs, broilers and turkeys. Studies are engaged in stress load of different reduction in floor space during transport in poultrty and pheasants, in stress load due to various transport conditions, stress load during the fish transport, stress effects of pre-slaughter shackling in poultry and also in the acute and chronic stress effects of noise during the fattennig period in poultry.
As a part of the research area, also the ethology in selected animal species is studied.
In toxicology area, the research is focused on the risk of aquatic environment contamination for humans from the point of view of food quality and safety. Experiments are targeted on the impact of selected water environment contamination substances important for food safety on the health indicators in fish. Embryolarval toxicity tests are used as the experimental models of the influence of environmental contaminants (pyrethroids, bisphenol A, estrogens, nitrites, etc.) on fish.
In the field of legislation, research activity is focused on the area of veterinary legislation, food control legislation and ecology legislation. Particularly, effectivity of enforcement of relevant legal regulations is studied and determined. In the area of veterinary protection of public health, veterinary hazards from meat and organs of food animals and evaluation of severity of their possible effects on public health are determined.
Equipment and Methods
In sight of instrumentation, the departement disposes of appropriate equipmet for research activity, gained from research grants, particularly liquid chromatograph, gas chromatograph, bioanalyzer, elisa reader, and further devices and laboratory appliances for analyses in the area of animal protection and toxicology.
Research Financing
Research activity is also supported by internal grant agents (IGA UVS Brno, IVA UVS Brno) and FRVŠ projects.
