Agricultural intensification heightens food safety risks posed by wild birds

1. Agricultural intensification and simplification are key drivers of recent declines in wild bird populations, heightening the need to better balance conservation with food production. This is hindered, however, by perceptions that birds threaten food safety. While birds are known reservoirs of foodborne pathogens, there remains uncertainty about the links between landscape context, farming practices, and actual crop contamination by birds.

2. Here, we examine relationships between landscape context, farming practices, and pathogen contamination by birds using a barrier-to-spillover approach. First, we censused bird communities using point count surveys. Second, we collected 2024 faecal samples from captured birds alongside 1215 faecal samples from brassica fields and food processing areas across 50 farms spanning the USA West Coast. We then estimated the prevalence of three foodborne pathogens across landscape and livestock intensification gradients. Finally, we quantified the numb...