CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Excessive use of antimicrobials in intensive livestock farming as One Health issue

One of a series of blogs written by CABI editors for One Health Day November 3rd 2016

Most antibiotics in livestock farming are used in aquaculture, but significant amounts are also used in terrestrial livestock species, particularly in poultry and pigs.

Most antibiotics in intensive livestock farming are used for non-therapeutic purposes

Approximately 70% of antibiotics are used for non- therapeutic purposes, i.e. many antibiotics are used in sub- therapeutic doses and over prolonged periods, which leads to the development of genes that confer antimicrobial resistance to animal pathogens. These genes can subsequently be transferred to human pathogens and it is estimated that 75% of recently emerging diseases in humans are of animal origin.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) problems are further exacerbated by the fact that antibiotic resistance genes were found in bacteria long before antibiotics were ever used on super-pathogens in farm animals.

AMR is a worldwide problem, which clearly affects both animal and human health, and hence it is truly One Health issue.

 

Why Latin America is nearer elimination of rabies than Africa

 
"World Rabies Day" is September 28th. Copyright: CC, Global Alliance for Rabies Control   
   
Rabies: a contagious and fatal viral disease of dogs and other mammals, transmissible through the saliva to humans and causing madness and convulsions. Rabies is fatal once symptoms appear.

Latin America is doing far better at managing, controlling and ultimately eliminating rabies from the region. Africa is failing to make the same gains and a rethink is required: can the lessons learned in Latin America be  applied or adapted to Africa?

At  the biennial RSTMH meeting “Challenges in Disease Elimination” held in Cambridge [September 12-16th, 2016], Katie Hampson [University of Glasgow] described the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO)'s surveillance & management framework operating in Mexico and Brazil,  and devised to support the elimination of rabies in 25 PAHO countries. She also described the work of Tanzanian colleagues who have developed a “pragmatic approach to surveillance” for the African setting where resources are constrained.

Current situation of rabies control in Latin America vs Africa

The short answer is that in Latin America, PAHO, which exists to “strengthen national and local health systems and improve the health of the peoples of the Americas”, has concentrated on vaccinating the dog population against rabies and interrupting transmission. African countries have no similar regional support structure for their health ministries and rely on post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP)  of humans bitten by dogs, to achieve a form of control of rabies. PEP vaccination only saves lives if the bitten person has timely access to a well-stocked clinic, and the money to pay for the shots. In remote and rural areas, this can lead to grim choices: which child do you treat if you only have money for one?  We heard at the RSTMH of an African mother with several children bitten by the “family dog”, who having travelled a great distance to reach the vaccine, was then faced with that very choice.

Author of the Month Blog: Equine Thermography in Practice, Dr Maria Soroko

About the author

My interest in equine thermography started during my Equine Science Masters degree studies at Aberystwyth University, Wales in 2008.

The initial research in equine thermography was for my Masters dissertation on the application of thermography in diagnosing injuries of racehorses (fig. 1). The main objective of the investigations was to assess thermography for predicting, detecting and monitoring lameness, and to determine if thermography could be a suitable tool for trainers in monitoring a horse’s limbs.

Fig. 1. Thermogram of a racehorse.

Buzzing activity around pollinator health

Yesterday I cherished the start of spring in England by attending an event devoted to pollinators and pollination at the University of Reading. Most presentations at this meeting organised by the Royal Entomological Society were understandably about bees, but we also heard a few talks highlighting the importance of other pollinator groups.

For about five years now the media has been broadcasting alarming news about declining bee populations especially in Europe and North America. While the amounting evidence points to neonicotinoid insecticides being a major cause for the decline, I learnt yesterday that the situation is actually rather complex, other stressors are also involved, and scientists are still eagerly trying to form a complete understanding of the issue.

Workshop on “Food Security: Infectious Diseases in Farm Animals”- Invited Lectures, Day 2

St. Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford,  UK,  4-7^th April 2016 

Attended by M Djuric, CAB International, Wallingford, UK, on 5^th April 2016 (Day 2)

This workshop meeting was jointly organised by the Pirbright Institute, Woking, UK and Cairo University, Egypt and was sponsored by the British Council Research Links Programme.

The aims of the workshop were to build long-term and sustainable links between scientists in the UK and Egypt working in the field of infectious diseases of poultry and livestock.

The second day of the workshop  consisted of two sessions and included  four invited expert and engaging presentations by Professor Mohamed Shakal, Professor Fiona Tomly,  Professor Javier Guitian and Dr Roberto La Regione.

Venue: St. Catherine's College, Manor Road, Oxford

Workshop on “Food Security: Infectious Diseases in Farm Animals” brings together animal and veterinary scientists from Egypt and the UK

St. Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, UK,  4-7^th April 2016 

Attended by M Djuric, CAB International, Wallingford, UK, on 5^th April 2016 (Day 2)

This workshop meeting was jointly organised by the Pirbright Institute, Woking, UK and Cairo University, Egypt and was sponsored by the British Council Research Links Programme.

There were 50-60 delegates in attendance at the meeting, with approximately one-half of delegates coming from various faculties and Research Institutes of Cairo University. The other half of participants came from the UK, including the Pirbright Institute, Woking, Royal Veterinary College (RVC), University of London, Surrey University and Roslin Institute, Edinburgh.

Venue: St. Catherine's College, Manor Road, Oxford

In total, 21 oral presentations, excluding invited speakers, and 17 posters were included in the meeting programme.               

A representative of the British Council, Shaun Holmes, was scheduled to provide information on Newton Fund News and Future Funding Opportunities on day three of the meeting. I attended on behalf of CABI on day two of the event.

Gail Tulloch reviews 'The Animal Trade'

“The Animal Trade” is a book of major importance that will make groundbreaking contributions to the fields of animal welfare and ethics, husbandry, and  government policy, nationally and, hopefully, internationally – as befits the expertise of its author, Clive Phillips. It is scholarly and comprehensive in its sweep, as well as being tightly written, so that the reader is sometimes stunned by the sheer sweep of what has been distilled into one sentence. It is also extremely reader and student friendly, with a clear introduction and conclusion to each chapter, as well as excellent diagrams. Its 10 chapters comprise The History of Animal Trade; Trade Policies for Animal Products; Trade Wars, Sanctions and Discriminations; Trade in Meat; Trade in Some Key Animal Products: Dairy, Wool and Fur; Trade in Live Farm Animals; Disease Transmission and Biodiversity Loss Through the Trade in Farm Animals; Trade in Horses, Cats and Dogs; Trade in Wildlife and Exotic Species; The Future of Animal Trade.

Author of the Month Blog: Mason's World Encyclopedia of Livestock Breeds and Breeding, Valerie Porter

A tall, spare, bearded, lively, modest, quietly humorous and gentle man, the animal breeding consultant Ian L Mason was known and respected worldwide for his encyclopaedic and authoritative knowledge of livestock breeds and breeding. It was said of him by a friend in Israel: ‘It is known in Asia that Dr Mason has a beard, wears a beret and rides a bicycle.’ His wife Elizabeth – they were married for nearly 70 years – first met him at Cambridge University in the 1930s when she became aware of a tall (6ft 2), gauche and unpredictable young man with a shock of wavy fair hair and very long legs, who ‘rushed about a lot’.

Long before the creation of various rare-breed organisations in different parts of the world, Ian’s vision had been to conserve indigenous livestock breeds, even then being threatened by the rapid expansion of major commercial breeds. His aim was firstly to identify and catalogue each breed, preferably by seeing them in the field in their own country, and then to promote their protection by educating breeders, institutes, academics and practical farmers about their special qualities. As he wrote in 1974, ‘any extinction or disappearance of a species or breed represents an irreplaceable element of the life diversity that is lost’.

Author of the month blog: The Animal Trade, Clive Phillips

About four years ago, I started to get concerned that the full impact of expansion and intensification of the animal production industries worldwide was not understood, by those in power, by scientists and definitely not by the public. The relatively rapid introduction of intensive farming systems over the last fifty years, and their widespread adoption over many parts of the globe has made many people question the ethics and impact on animal welfare, but no-one has considered the impact from all angles and charted the changes over time, including predictions of what would happen if such trends continued. As well as often displaying a disregard for the animals’ needs, modern intensive animal production systems have major environmental impacts, are morally challengeable, have adverse effects on the health of consumers and use large amounts of resources that are in limited supply, in particular cereals and other staple foods for humans, water and fossil fuels. The trade in live animals, which has been growing with the availability of cheap transport systems, such as by container ship, has additional problems, particularly the spread of diseases both to other animals and to people.

EU dairy industry outlook following the abolition of milk quotas

By Miroslav Djuric, DVM, CAB International, Wallingford, UK.

Milk is the EU's number one agricultural product in terms of value, accounting for approximately 15% of agricultural output with approximately 148 million tonnes of cow milk produced in 2014. The dairy sector is also of significant economic and social importance in the EU, with over 650,000 specialised dairy farmers,almost 18 million dairy cows and 1.2 million people engaged in dairying  (Eurostat census 2010). 

The EU milk supply was managed for more than 30 years by the EU milk quota system which expired on 1 April 2015. This system provided a national quota and an individual quota fixed for each producer or purchaser, with a penalty (‘superlevy') payable by individual farmers and countries who exceeded their quotas.