Wastewater as Sentinel for Emerging Viral Diseases in Livestock: A Systematic Review
Shaha, Mishuk, Das, Ashutosh, Saha, Joyshri, Rahaman, Md Mizanur, Gupta, Mukta Das, Talukder, Saranika, and Sarker, Subir (2026) Wastewater as Sentinel for Emerging Viral Diseases in Livestock: A Systematic Review. Viruses, 18. 385.
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Abstract
The accelerating frequency of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in livestock poses a significant threat to global food security, as well as to animal and public health. While wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) has advanced significantly for human health surveillance, its application to livestock production systems remains fragmented and lacks standardization. This review synthesizes current evidence on livestock wastewater-based surveillance (L-WBS) as an early-warning sentinel for emerging viral pathogens, evaluating their dynamics, economic impacts, biosecurity measures, and One Health implications. Existing studies demonstrate that L-WBS effectively detects emerging viral pathogens in agricultural effluent, swine manure, and municipal wastewater systems serving livestock regions, frequently preceding clinical outbreak recognition. We further conceptualized a multifactorial framework linking environmental drivers such as climate and ecological disruption and agricultural intensification to pathogen emergence dynamics. Economic assessments show substantial direct losses (approximately US$ 950 per H5N1-infected dairy cow and US$ 25.9 billion in African swine fever virus (ASFV)-related damages across China) alongside indirect costs from biosecurity implementation, workforce disruption, and supply-chain instability. We recommend prioritizing methodological standardization through unified sampling and extraction protocols, integration of next-generation sequencing for genomic surveillance, and cross-sectoral policy frameworks to operationalize L-WBS as a global early-warning infrastructure for mitigating zoonotic spillover and livestock-dependent community resilience.
| Item ID: | 91983 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1999-4915 |
| Keywords: | emerging viral pathogens, environmental drivers, livestock, One Health, wastewater-based surveillance, zoonotic spillover |
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| Copyright Information: | © 2026 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. |
| Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC) |
| Projects and Grants: | ARC grant number DE200100367 |
| Date Deposited: | 19 May 2026 00:21 |
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