**1. Introduction**

Urban areas are city areas characterized by a dense human population of mixed age, sex, family and household structure, ethnic, cultural, religious diversity, educational and income levels,

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and high built-up area with technological and economic advancement. Rural areas, on the other hand, are open broad areas of land located far from towns and cities, which are composed of extensive bushes between large crop fields and livestock herds and sparse housing and population density. Between the urban and rural settings lies peri-urban zone whose population, livestock, crops and land use features are influenced by the proximate interface. Part of peri-urban area adjacent to urban area has features resembling urban features, while its other side assumes the rural characteristics. There is no distinct line separating the peri-urban from urban and rural settings, but a slow zone of change [1]. The gradual transition from peri-urban to urban setup is moving constantly away from city center toward the rural direction due to persistent urbanization pressure, especially in developing countries.

Urban and peri-urban livestock farming is expanding in developing countries primarily due to high demand for protein of animal origin to feed the rapidly growing urban populations, but also to generate income of livestock keeping households [2]. It is also a diversification tactic to spread livelihood risks in adverse situations [3]. Some urban and peri-urban dwellers continue to keep livestock to maintain their rural cultural values [4]. The expansion of urban and peri-urban livestock farming, which is reflected as an increase in number of both the livestock and households involved in keeping livestock, and rapid urban human population growth has increased the chance of contact between humans, animals and manure. Urban areas of Morogoro in Tanzania, for example, had a cattle population of 2618 in 1996 [5], which almost doubly increased to 4170 in 2006 [6]. By 2008, the cattle population in Morogoro urban was 19,099, and among them, 4425 were dairy cattle [7]. This cattle population hiked up to 49,625 in 2012 [8]. Rapid urban population growth is primarily caused by influx of people from rural areas either as migrants or as commuters [1, 9]. For instance, Tanzania's annual population growth rate between 1988 and 2002 was 3% with the urban population size increasing from 18% in 1988 to 23% in 2002 [10]. Moreover, population size and growth in rural and urban areas of Morogoro region from 2002 to 2012 show that the rural population grew by 23.7% from 1,279,513 in 2002 to 1,582,434 compared to 34.2% growth in urban population from 473,849 in 2002 to 636,058 in 2012 [8]. In this region, the general population density changed from 24 persons per square kilometer in 2002 to 31 persons per square kilometer in 2012 [11]. As a result of increased human and animal density, the chance of contact between humans and livestock has increased. The growth in animal population and concomitant increase in manure production, in shrinking space separating humans, livestock and manure, require appropriate livestock and manure management practices taking into account that livestock harbors zoonotic pathogens [12].

Four decades ago, before the expansion of urban and peri-urban livestock farming, free open communal cattle grazing system required minimal effort to manage manure [3, 13]. Cattle freely grazed during daytime and were confined during the night for security. Most manure was left scattered everywhere except for a small amount which was applied on crop fields [3, 14]. To date, the manure management practices have changed to adapt to densely populated areas where the space separating humans from animals and their wastes has decreased. A question arises: does this change consider prevention of animal and human from pathogen exposure as well as environmental contamination? This chapter describes assessment of manure management practices and risks of contact and transmission of cattle manure-related zoonotic pathogens between cattle, humans and the environment in urban and peri-urban areas of Morogoro region of Tanzania. This report forms a basis for developing strategies to improve urban and peri-urban livestock farming practices in order to safeguard human, animal and ecosystem health in settings similar to study area.
