In recent times, many zoonotic diseases have emerged with serious negative consequences on humans. In the light of this, ante-mortem inspections were conducted, using body condition scoring to assess the health status of livestock presenting for slaughter, and to identify issues relating to meat inspection in four purposively selected government approved abattoirs in Benue State, Nigeria. The result of our assessment showed that 5.0% of the cattle and goats presented for slaughter during the investigation period were highly emaciated animals with a prevalence range of 0.0–12.1% with variance between abattoirs, whereas 37.9% were moderately emaciated and 57.2% had good body condition. Extreme emaciation was higher in cattle (6.7%) compared to the goats (3.2%). The moderately high prevalence of emaciated animals intended for human consumption coupled with unorganized and inappropriate meat inspection in the studied abattoirs has serious public health implications. To prevent consumers from contacting zoonotic diseases, education of butchers and traders is necessary for thorough and effective inspections. In addition, animal traders should be encouraged to seek veterinary assistance for their sick animals. Meat inspectors should treat all emaciated animals as suspects, as emaciation could be a cause from underlying health problems.

The purpose of this study was to provide fundamental information on both the common toxicants and poisoning episodes in dogs within Effurun/Warri municipality region of Delta State of Nigeria from 2011 to 2014. The collected data were grouped according to age, sex, breed, year of occurrence, and toxicant type. The study revealed that a total of 76 dogs comprising 12 breeds were poisoned by several toxicants such as pesticides (69%; n=52/76), household products (12%; n=9/76), food and ndash;poisons (9%; n=7/76), and snakebite envenomation (3%; n=2/76). Mixed breeds (29%; n=22/76), Alsatian (25%; n=19/76), Rottweiler (16%; n=12/76) and indigenous breed (7%; n=5/76) ranked the topmost breeds accounted for most poison emergencies with human and ndash;related factors incriminated. This study provides useful information on episodes of poisoning in dogs in the studied region. The knowledge of agents involved can help veterinarians for accurate diagnosis, and pet owners to cautiously protect their pets from potentially poisonous substances. [J Adv Vet Anim Res 2015; 2(3.000): 357-361