Soil ingestion, a key determinant of exposure to environmental contaminants. The case study of chlordecone exposure in free-range pigs in the French West Indies.

Generic methodology to prevent food contamination by soil born legacy POPs in free range livestock

“…Intensively reared animals are mainly raised indoors on a concrete floor and by consequence would hardly have direct access to soil reducing their soil intake only to dust or mud deposited on the feed. Numerous data for soil intake of outside raised animals have been published in the last decades allowing a determination or a reliable extrapolation for the majority of rearing systems [ [29] , [30] , [31] , [32] , 86 , 87 ]. Here again, extensively reared animals would be more exposed to consequent soil intakes due to the use of generally poorer surfaces or free-range rearing even when vegetation does not offer large grass swards (drought, flood lands, winter grazing, …).…”

“…Moreover, literature reported that free-range animals can ingest consequent amounts of soil. According to previous studies [ [29] , [30] , [31] , [32] ] dairy cattle may ingest 2–5% of dry soil but in extreme conditions up to 10% of dry soil depending on the grazing conditions. Free-range poultry could also consume soil in highly variable proportions: from 5 to 30% of soil in the totally ingested dry matter [ 19 ].…”