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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Humanities and Social Sciences
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1451198
This article is part of the Research Topic Extension Initiatives for Improving Livestock and Poultry Health and Production View all 4 articles

Comparing Traditional Surveys and Web-Scraped Data to Understand the Pigeon Racing Industry in

Provisionally accepted
Maurice Pitesky Maurice Pitesky 1Malekah Isa Malekah Isa 1Charlene Rivera Charlene Rivera 2Elise Streba Elise Streba 3Joseph David Gendreau Joseph David Gendreau 1*
  • 1 School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
  • 2 Animal Health Branch, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, California, United States
  • 3 Veterinary Services, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA), Ames, Iowa, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Recent outbreaks of virulent Newcastle disease (vND) in domestic poultry in Southern California have raised questions as to the source(s) and the mode(s) of transmission. While pigeons have been found to be capable of transmitting a variant of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) known as Pigeon paramyxovirus-1 (PPMV-1) to other avian species including poultry, the potential geographic distribution and scope of transmission from racing pigeons to other domestic poultry in Southern California is poorly understood. In order to better understand the potential risk of transmission of vND from racing pigeons to domestic poultry, an extension-initiated survey was conducted in addition to social-media based analysis of racing pigeon activity associated with postings on a web-based popular classified advertisement (CAW) in Southern California. Likely due to the the insularity of the pigeon racing industry in Southern California, only 1 survey response was completed. However, monitoring results from the CAW demonstrated a much higher level of social media activity associated with racing pigeon sales in Southern California. Specifically, 191 unique posts associated with pigeon sales were flagged between 12/21/2020 and 1/21/2021 demonstrating the potential for the analysis of social media as an extension-based tool. Data from the CAW showed that the majority of pigeon related posts and sales came from both the Inland Empire region of Southern California and San Diego county which overlapped with the established vND control zone. From an extension perspective, while traditional-based surveys can still provide valuable information, web-scraping of social media can provide a continuous source of spatio-temporal data that can facilitate extension-based observations and analysis among hard to reach stakeholder groups.

    Keywords: Data curation, investigation, project administration, supervision, Writingoriginal draft, Writingreview & editing. Elise Streba: Investigation, Writingreview & editing. Joseph David Gendreau: Conceptualization, Formal analysis

    Received: 18 Jun 2024; Accepted: 23 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pitesky, Isa, Rivera, Streba and Gendreau. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Joseph David Gendreau, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.