One Health to feature at international conference on tropical veterinary medicine

The holistic concept of ‘One World-One Health’ in disease prevention and control will be among the topics of discussion at the first joint international conference of the Association of Institutions for Tropical Veterinary Medicine (AITVM) and the Society of Tropical Veterinary Medicine (STVM) which is scheduled to place on 4-8 September 2016 in Berlin, Germany.

AITVM is a foundation of 24 veterinary faculties and livestock institutes based in Africa, Asia and Europe with the mandate to improve human health and quality of life by means of increased and safe food production in tropical regions through enhancement of research, training and education in veterinary medicine and livestock production within the framework of sustainable development.

STVM is made up of scientists, veterinarians and students from more than 40 countries with common interests in tropical veterinary medicine. It is a non-profit organization whose purpose is the advancement of tropical veterinary medicine, hygiene and related disciplines.

The joint conference will bring together animal health and production experts, senior and junior career researchers and students from all over the world to discuss research and development topics including animal and zoonotic disease control, food safety, genetic resources and biodiversity, rural development and animal production, training and capacity building and animal welfare.

The conference is organized by the Institute for Parasitology and Tropical Veterinary Medicine and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Reference Centre for Veterinary Public Health of the Freie Universität Berlin.

The co-organizing institutions are:

• the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute – Federal Research Institute for Animal Health
• the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment
• the German Veterinary Medical Society
• Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Germany
• the Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The conference organizers are now accepting abstracts. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 15 March 2016.

Visit the conference website for more information.

 

New research paper reviews the emerging threat of microsporidia, a group of foodborne parasites

Catch of the day, Khulna, Bangladesh. Fish are among the aquatic hosts of microsporidia, a group of emerging foodborne parasites. (photo credit: WorldFish/Yousuf Tushar).

In December 2015, the World Health Organization published a report of the first ever global and regional estimates of the burden of foodborne diseases.

The report estimates the burden of foodborne diseases caused by 31 agents – bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and chemicals – and shows that almost 1 in 10 people fall ill every year from eating contaminated food and 420,000 die as a result.

Children under five years of age are at particularly high risk, with 125,000 children dying from foodborne diseases every year. Africa and Southeast Asia have the highest burden of foodborne diseases.

Microsporidia are among the many contributors to the global burden of foodborne disease, although they are not currently considered to be priority foodborne parasites.

Microsporidia are a group of spore-forming parasites that infect a wide range of host organisms, including humans. People can get infected with microsporidia through ingesting contaminated food and water. People with weakened immune systems are at particularly high risk of infection.

To address the growing threat of this emerging group of pathogens, a group of experts met at a symposium entitled “Microsporidia in the animal to human food chain: An international symposium to address chronic epizootic disease”. The meeting was sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and held in Vancouver, Canada in August 2015.

Kristina Roesel, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), presented a paper entitled “Parasites in food chains”. Her presentation contributed to a collaborative review article, “Microsporidia – Emergent pathogens in the global food chain”, published in the journal Trends in Parasitology (18 Jan 2016).

The article examines the threat of microsporidia in food, water and major food production chains. The authors note that climate change may result in a greater disease burden in hosts from all environments and thus increase the contact rate between infected animals and humans. A One Health approach will, therefore, be useful to manage the risks of microsporidian infections in wildlife, food animals and humans.

 

Symposium to discuss results on estimates of global burden of foodborne diseases

Testing milk in Kenya’s informal market (photo credit: ILRI/Dave Elsworth).

Illness and death from diseases caused by contaminated food are a constant threat to public health and a significant impediment to socioeconomic development worldwide.

To help address the lack of data on the global extent of this problem, the World Health Organization established the Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) to generate the first ever estimates of the global burden of foodborne disease.

The group published its results in December 2015 in a series of scientific articles in PLOS Collections and a report titled WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases.

They include estimates of the burden of foodborne diseases caused by 31 bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and chemicals.

The results will be presented and discussed at a FERG symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 15-16 December 2015.

Countries will be able to use these estimates to inform national policy development aimed at improving food safety and public health throughout the food chain.

 

Lessons in informality from Kenya’s dairy sector

A typical milk bar in Kenya. Packaged milk in supermarkets has been found to be no better at meeting food safety standards than raw milk sold from kiosks (photo credit: ILRI/Dave Elsworth).

Kenya’s informal dairy markets are central to the livelihoods, food security and nutrition of the majority of its citizens, particularly the poor, women and children. Kenya’s informal dairy market is significant in size – 86% of Kenya’s milk is sold by unorganized, small-scale businesses in informal markets or consumed directly at home. The sector generates 70% of the 40,000 jobs in dairy marketing and processing.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has been working in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya to explore the impacts of efforts to govern Kenya’s dairy sector in a way that works with, rather than against, informal, small-scale milk vendors. We looked at the impact on milk vendors, on food safety and on sustainability, with the findings published in the final briefing in a series on innovations in policy approaches to informality.

Read the rest of the blog post, Lessons in informality from Kenya’s dairy sector, by Emma Blackmore. Originally posted on the IIED website.

 

New learning resource provides key evidence on food safety in developing countries

A woman milks one of her goats in Ségou District, Mali (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

Livelihoods advisers and other interested development professionals can now benefit from a new learning resource on food safety in developing countries. It was written by Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and published by Evidence on Demand, an international development information hub supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

The learning resource, Food safety in developing countries: An overview, aims to provide ‘non-food safety experts’ with a good understanding of foodborne disease within the broader context of ‘development’ discussions. It assumes that readers already have a solid grasp of international development contexts, and current development discourse.

It is presented in three main sections:

Part 1 will help readers to understand what is meant by foodborne disease and its impact. It summarises current best evidence and knowledge gaps on foodborne disease in developing countries.

Part 2 summarises some of the interventions for managing food safety and stimulates thinking about the ‘so what’ questions. It shows that foodborne disease is preventable.

Part 3 covers food trends and drivers that affect food safety in developing countries in more detail. It also reviews the geography of food safety and how this impacts on people who are poor, and looks at what food safety means for small farmers, export industries, women, the most vulnerable people, and for nutrition.

The conclusions presented at the end capture what the current best evidence is telling us:

• Food safety has been neglected in developing countries. There is growing evidence that foodborne disease may be an important contributor to gastrointestinal disease.
• Foodborne disease has been increasing in developed countries and is likely to increase in developing countries.
• Foodborne disease is not just a health issue. Already a major determinant of export market access, it is increasingly affecting domestic markets.

 

ILRI presentations win prizes at international conference on pork safety

Maurice Murungi, a graduate fellow attached to the Urban Zoo project, receives the award for best oral presentation by students at the Safe Pork 2015 conference (photo credit: ILRI/Fred Unger).

With rapidly increasing populations and unprecedented rates of urbanization, the demand for meat also rises. Much of this demand is being met by poultry and pig meat as production is well placed to scale up because of short cycles, large numbers of offspring and ability to grow fast on cereal feeds.

In the case of pork, however, one crucial barrier must be overcome if it is to contribute optimally to feeding the future: pork safety. Indeed, since prehistoric times, pork has been subject to taboos and it has been argued that this is because of the large number of parasites and pathogens that pigs can carry.

The biennial Safe Pork conference is the premier meeting for researchers, industry and policymakers concerned with the safety of pork. This year, the meeting was held on 7-10 September in Porto, a coastal city in Portugal, and was co-organized by Spanish and Portuguese universities.

Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) presented findings from the Livestock and Fish and Agriculture for Nutrition and Health research programs in the smallholder pig sectors of Uganda and Vietnam as well as from the Urban Zoo project on urban livestock value chains in Kenya and work on possible links between pork production and antimicrobial resistance.

Three ILRI scientists (Delia Grace, Maurice Murungi and Fred Unger) attended as well as visiting scientist Pablo Alarcon. Although our delegation was small, our impact was high and ILRI was awarded two of the four ‘best in show’ prizes: Maurice accepting the prize for best oral presentation by students on behalf of the Urban Zoo team and Delia the prize for best poster on behalf of the PigRisk team.

The conference was an excellent snapshot of the big issues in pork safety. There were several presentations on the most serious zoonotic pathogens in modern pork industries: Salmonella, Campylobacter and Listeria.

Emerging pathogens were of obvious concern with presentations on hepatitis E and livestock-associated Staphylococcus. In his sum up, the chair said that antimicrobial resistance was the issue of the day; this was witnessed by two sessions on this important topic. Both economics and One Health had a profile.

Overall, the focus of the conference was mostly on intensive swine production in Europe and North America. This had the side effect of drawing more attention to ILRI presentations as participants were interested to hear views from the South and in a globalized world, disease is not a regional problem.

As was pointed out, Denmark may successfully reduce treatment regimes from 20 milligrams to 10, but if countries elsewhere are using thousands of tons of antibiotics a year, their achievement will have little impact in curbing rising antimicrobial resistance.

The conference format was all plenaries, increasing the salience of presentations, and industry was well represented from both pharmaceutical and production sectors.

All in all, the conference was a good opportunity to disseminate ILRI research, get updated on pork safety and network for future collaboration. The next Safe Pork meeting will be held in 2017 in Brazil.

Listed below are the ILRI presentations at the Safe Pork 2015 conference.

Assessing and understanding food safety risk practices in Nairobi pork food system: A value chain approach
Murungi, M.K.; M.; Muinde, P.; Akoko, J.; Rushton, J.; Fèvre, E.M.; Dominguez-Salas, P.; Muloi, D.; Häsler, B.; Alarcon, P.

Food safety challenges in smallholder pig value chains in Vietnam: From an assessment to feasible interventions using an integrated approach
Unger, F.; Lapar, L.; Van Hung, P.; Dang-Xuan, S.; Hong Ngan, P.; Rich, K.M.; Nguyen, H.; Grace, D.

Market based approaches for food safety and animal health interventions in smallholder pig systems: The case of Vietnam
Rich, K.M.; Thu Huyen, N.T.; Nam Ha, D.; Duong Nga, N.T.; Xuan, V.K.; Trung, N.X.; Van Long, T.; Van Hung, P.; Unger, F.; Hamza, K.; Lapar, L.

Present and future use of antimicrobials in pigs in developing countries and case studies from Uganda and Vietnam
Grace, D.; Unger, F.; Roesel, K.; Tinega, G.; Ndoboli, D.; Sinh, D.X.; Nguyen-Viet, H.; Robinson, T.

Risk-based approach for food safety applied to pork value chain in Vietnam
Nguyen-Viet, H.; Sinh, D.X.; Hanh, T.T.T.; Unger, F.; Grace, D.; Phuc, P.D.; Makita, K.

Serological and molecular investigation for brucellosis in swine in selected districts of Uganda
Erume, J.; Roesel, K.; Dione, M.M.; Ejobi, F.; Mboowa, G.; Kungu, J.; Akol, J.; Pezo, D.; El-Adawy, H.; Melzer, F.; Elschner, M.; Neubauer, H.; Grace, D.

Blog post contributed by ILRI scientists Delia Grace and Fred Unger

 

New book chapter explores how trade liberalization affects nutrition and health

Locally made beef stew sold in Bagnon market at Yopougon, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Informal food trade is less amenable to regulation and may be an important cause of foodborne disease (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

The World Health Organization last month (August 2015) published a book on trade and health that provides useful background information for health policymakers to formulate a national response to trade and health-related issues, especially within the context of liberalization of global trade.

Trade liberalization influences the entire food supply chain. Changes along the food supply chain in turn influence the environment in which consumers make choices about the food they eat. These choices affect the diets of consumers and, therefore, the prevalence of foodborne diseases, undernutrition, and obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases.

There are also indirect effects of trade liberalization on human nutrition and health. These include the effects on household incomes and the inadvertent entry of emerging human, animal and plant diseases.

However, assessing national-level nutrition and health impacts of trade and trade policy is a complex affair. Therefore, in a chapter on trade liberalization, food, nutrition and health, the authors discuss four basic steps that governments can adopt to assess the potential impact of trade liberalization on food-related health and nutrition. These are:

• an assessment of the types of impacts trade liberalization could have on a selected sub-set of key nodes in the food supply chain
• an assessment of the subsequent impact on food safety, food availability, food prices and food marketing
• an assessment on the food-related health outcomes themselves, namely foodborne diseases, undernutrition, and obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases
• an assessment of the implications of trade agreements on the policy space required to address these health conditions

The chapter also puts forward a number of opportunities for using trade policy to improve nutrition and health.

The chapter Trade liberalization, food, nutrition and health was authored by Corinna Hawkes, Honorary Fellow at the City University London Centre for Food Policy and Senior Adviser at the Leverhulme Center for Integrative Research into Agriculture and Health; Delia Grace, Program Leader, Food Safety and Zoonoses, International Livestock Research Institute and Anne Marie Thow, Lecturer in health policy at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney.

Access the book, Trade and Health: Towards building a National Strategy, edited by Richard Smith, Chantal Blouin, Zafar Mirza, Peter Beyer and Nick Drager.

 

Ways forward for food safety in countries bearing the brunt of the world’s food-borne diseases

ILRI news

Roadside meat for sale in Nairobi, Kenya (picture on Flickr by Andrew Chipley).

This article is written by Delia Grace

A new paper on food safety in low- and middle-income countries was published today (27 Aug 2015). The paper is based on a longer learning resource commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), which will appear shortly. Both publications reflect what the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its partners have learned over the last ten years since adopting a framework of risk analysis for assessing, managing and communicating about food safety in developing countries.

Some conclusions
The evidence indicates that low- and middle-income countries bear the brunt of food-borne disease; that developing-country consumers are concerned about food-borne diseases; that most of the known burden of food-borne disease comes from biological hazards; and that most food-borne disease results from eating contaminated perishable foods sold…

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ILRI supports Thailand symposium on food safety, zoonoses and EcoHealth

ILRI Asia

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently supported and co-organized a symposium on food safety, zoonoses and EcoHealth in Thailand.

ILRI scientists Fred Unger and Hung Nguyen with Pudji Astuti, Vice Dean, Vet Faculty, University of Gadjah Mada (second from left) and other researchers from the region at the Chiang Mai symposium (Photo credit: ILRI/Duong Van Nhiem).

The fourth Food Safety and Zoonoses Symposium for Asia Pacific, which also included the second Regional EcoHealth Symposium, held 3-5 August 2015 in Chiang Mai, brought together experts to share knowledge and information on food safety and zoonoses and to provide a platform for recent EcoHealth research.

This year’s theme was ‘Professional learning community for human–animal–environmental health’.

The symposium focused on several important themes including assessment of biological and chemical risks in food system, antimicrobial resistance in humans and animals, emergence of zoonoses and vector-borne diseases, innovation in surveillance and epidemiological tools…

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Towards professionalizing—not criminalizing—informal sellers of milk and meat in poor countries

ILRI news

Transporting fresh milk by motorcycle in Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Ben Lukuyu).

‘. . . Researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners have developed and piloted an institutional innovation—a training, certification and branding scheme for informal value chain actors—with good potential to improve the safety of animal-source foods sold in informal markets.

‘Past development policy often focused on formal markets, which at best meant neglect of informal markets and often resulted in harassment and penalties for informal agents.

While in the long term markets are likely to formalize, in the short term, interventions that seek to suppress informal markets can be both ineffective and antipoor.

‘Recent evidence suggests that a more constructive, incentive-based approach to informal markets could improve their contribution to economic development as well as increase compliance with standards in areas such as the environment, public health, and labor.

‘There is a growing recognition of…

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