ILRI research on animal health and food safety featured at the 6th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture

ILRI scientist Silvia Alonso presents at the 6th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture held at Nairobi, Kenya on 27-30 October 2014 (photo credit: ILRI/Tezira Lore).

Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) yesterday (28 Oct 2014) presented some of their recent research findings from studies on animal health and food safety in East Africa at the 6th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture. The conference is being held from 27 to 30 October 2014 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Some 300 participants from all over Africa and beyond are attending the conference whose theme is Africa’s animal agriculture: Macro-trends and future opportunities. The five conference sub-themes are:

• Youth: The future hope?
• Which way for smallholder production systems?
• Pastoral systems: Options for tomorrow
• Market access: Opportunities for enhanced access to local, regional and global markets
• Africa’s human capacity challenge for animal agriculture: Which way now?

Silvia Alonso, a postdoctoral scientist with ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses program presented the following two papers:

• Smallholder pig producers and their pork consumption practices in three districts in Uganda (presented on behalf of lead author Kristina Roesel, an ILRI graduate fellow at Freie Universitaet Berlin and coordinator of the Safe Food, Fair Food project)
• Vaccination as a way forward? A case study on how a poultry vaccination intervention influences poultry keeping in Kenya (presented on behalf of lead author Johanna Lindahl, an ILRI postdoctoral scientist)

Results from a study on Kenyan milk consumers’ behaviour and perceptions of aflatoxin were also presented. This study was a joint output of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets.

Additionally, the following ILRI posters on smallholder dairying in Tanzania and pastoralism in Kenya and Tanzania featured in the poster session:

• Smallholder dairy farming in Tanzania: Farming practices, and animal health and public health challenges and opportunities
• Pastoralism in Kenya and Tanzania: Challenges and opportunities in animal health and food security
• Creating novel approaches to mitigate aflatoxin risk in food and feed with lactic acid bacteria – mold growth inhibition and aflatoxin binding

 

Posters by projects in ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses program featured at the 6th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture held at Nairobi, Kenya on 27-30 October 2014 (photo credit: ILRI/Tezira Lore).

 

 

 

Slaughterhouse number 5 – examining zoonotic diseases in western Kenya

 

Annie Cook is a graduate fellow at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya. In this blog post she describes a day in the life of her PhD project.

“I am a veterinary epidemiologist which means I investigate the behaviour of diseases in animal populations. I am particularly interested in zoonoses: diseases that pass from animals to people.”

“The research project I am conducting was requested by the community. During a previous study that looked at zoonotic diseases in pigs at slaughter, our research group was asked to develop a project examining disease in the workers themselves. The workers wanted to know the occupational risks they faced at work.”

Read the full post on the CGIAR Development Dialogues blog

 

Mitigation of the impacts of Rift Valley fever through targeted vaccination strategies

The Rift Valley fever virus is a mosquito-borne pathogen that causes explosive outbreaks of severe human and livestock disease in Africa and Arabian Peninsula. The rapid evolution of outbreaks of Rift Valley fever generates exceptional challenges in its mitigation and control.

A decision-support tool for prevention and control of Rift Valley fever in the Greater Horn of Africa identifies a series of events that indicates increasing risk of an outbreak and matches interventions to each event.

This poster, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents information from a study that assessed the effectiveness of targeted vaccination in mitigating the impacts of outbreaks of Rift Valley fever.

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Mitigation of the impacts of Rift Valley fever through targeted vaccination strategies

This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives.  See all the posters.

 

 

Pastoralism: Animal health and food safety situation analysis in Kenya and Tanzania

Pastoralism is a farming system practised in arid and semi arid lands by societies that derive most of their food and income from livestock production. About 70% of the land mass in the Horn of Africa is dry land. In Kenya 80% of the land mass is classified as arid and semi-arid while approximately half of Tanzania consists of dry land. These dry lands can only be effectively used for livestock rearing, supporting wildlife resource harvesting and tourism.

The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014 conference, presents findings of a situation analysis of animal health and its implication on food safety in Kenya and Tanzania. The study reports on livestock diseases with high prevalence and their likely effects on food safety and food security in pastoral communities in the two countries. The extent of species rearing diversification, pastoralist trade orientation and practices that may expose the community and their trading partners to animal and zoonotic infections are also explained.

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Pastoralism: Animal health and food safety situation analysis, Kenya and Tanzania

This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives.  See all the posters.

 

Aflatoxins: serious threat to food safety and food security, but is it related to livestock?

Aflatoxins are cancer-causing mycotoxins produced by the mould Aspergillus flavus. Aspergillus can grow in a wide range of foods and feed and thrives under favourable conditions of high temperature and moisture content.

Aflatoxin contamination can occur before crops are harvested when temperatures are high, during harvest if wet conditions occur and after harvest if there is insect damage to the stored crop or if moisture levels are high during storage and transportation.

Aflatoxins in contaminated animal feed not only result in reduced animal productivity, but can also end up in milk, meat and eggs, thus presenting a health risk to humans.

The poster below, prepared for the Tropentag 2014  conference, presents an overview of a research project led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) aimed at measuring and mitigating the risk of aflatoxins in the feed-dairy chain in Kenya.

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Aflatoxins: serious threat to food safety and food security, but is it related to livestock?

This week, ILRI staff are participating in the Tropentag 2014 International Conference in Prague (17-19 September 2014). There is also a dedicated ILRI@40 side event on livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security and healthy lives.  See all the posters.

 

ILRI researcher wins University of Queensland alumni award

Tarni Cooper with children from a livestock-keeping household in Morogoro, Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).

We are pleased to congratulate Tarni Cooper, a veterinary scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), on being named as one of five recipients of the 2014 Distinguished Young Alumni awards of the University of Queensland (UQ). The award will be presented at a ceremony scheduled for 2 October 2014.

The award recognises outstanding alumni aged 35 years or younger whose early accomplishments inspire and provide leadership to students and alumni. She was a UQ valedictorian in 2010 when she was awarded her Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree with honours and also won the Dr John Gibb Biosecurity Memorial Prize that year.

In 2013, Cooper worked with ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses program as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development and was part of a research team that worked in rural Tanzania on a project to assess the presence of a range of potential pathogens in smallholder dairy cattle. She studied the use of various communication approaches to obtain informed consent during research.

An enumerator uses a poster to obtain informed consent for research in Morogoro, Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).

Livestock keepers in Morogoro, Tanzania examine a poster used to obtain informed consent for research (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).

Previously, she spent time in Vietnam during a five-year project, working with smallholder pig farmers and using participatory video as an innovative communication approach to help the farmers learn from each other and improve their pig production methods. Earlier this year she returned to Vietnam and used participatory photography to study the long-term impact of the film.

Cooper is currently collaborating with ILRI on a Vietnam-based project on livestock competitiveness and food safety, as well as serving on the Institutional Research Ethics Committee. Her next career goal is to undertake a PhD in communication for social change.

 

New studies on MERS coronavirus and camels in eastern Africa published

ILRI news

Part of a large camel herd in northern Kenya; on the outskirts of Marsabit and Moyale, the average distances to watering points run into dozens of kilometres (photo credit: Ann Weru/IRIN).

Written by Dan Klotz

Two new papers on MERS coronavirus and camels in Eastern Africa have been published in the science journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Summary points

• Studies find that camels in Egypt, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan have antibodies to the coronavirus that causes MERS.
• The first study indicates that young camels are at greater risk of harbouring the virus than older camels.
• We do not know if the infections in East African camels have led to, or could lead to, disease in people; this possibility should be investigated.
• We do not know if or how much the East African camel virus is related to the one infecting camels and people in the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt; this possibility…

View original post 976 more words

 

New ILRI report assesses risk of Ebola in Uganda’s pig value chain

Local breed sow and piglets on a farm in Masaka district, Uganda. A new research report assesses the risk of Ebola in the pig value chain in Uganda. (photo credit: ILRI/Eliza Smith).

Scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) have published a report of a risk assessment to determine the threat of the deadly Ebola virus in the pig value chain in Uganda.

Uganda is currently witnessing a rise in demand for pork and this has led to increased pig production in the country, mostly under smallholder production systems.

These higher pig populations raised under free-range or tethering systems may create overlap of fruit bat habitats where the pigs scavenge for food, thereby presenting a possible risk of Ebola transmission as some bat species have been identified as reservoir hosts of the Ebola virus.

Uganda has experienced outbreaks of Ebola virus disease in the past. However, there are still many unanswered questions on the ecology and mode of transmission of the Ebola virus.

The risk assessment study, based on a systematic review of literature, identified possible routes of transmission of the Ebola virus if pigs are involved, for example, spread between wild and domestic pigs, direct contact between infected pigs and humans, and contact between pigs and fruit bats.

The study recommends more research on the possible role of pigs in Ebolavirus transmission, an area that is not well understood at the moment.

“The present data suggest that pigs may act as amplifying hosts, but likely not reservoir hosts. This suggests the conditions under which pigs become infected with Ebolavirus and the role they play in transmission may have many variables that will have to be elucidated,” the report states.

Further research is underway to investigate the possible role of domestic pigs in the ecology of Ebola virus in Uganda and understand the public health significance of the virus to the pig value chain in this country.

The work includes laboratory diagnostics from a large sample of blood from domestic pigs collected as part of the initial wider value chain disease assessment.

This will be accompanied by a risk mapping study using spatial epidemiology and key informant surveys as well as some participatory techniques with key stakeholders to better understand risk factors and to serve as a ‘ground-truthing’ exercise for the risk map.

It is hoped that this research will lead to further collaborations with other public health organizations and serve as a potential predictive tool in the event of future outbreaks of Ebola in Uganda.

Access the research report here

Citation
Atherstone C, Roesel K and Grace D. 2014. Ebola risk assessment in the pig value chain in Uganda. ILRI Research Report 34. Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI.

 

ILRI postdoctoral scientist awarded TWAS-DFG cooperation visit to Germany

Joseph Erume, a researcher at Makerere University, has been awarded a three-month cooperation visit to the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI) in Jena, Germany starting June 2014.

Through this visit, he will continue his research work on seroprevalence and molecular characterization of Brucella suis in pigs in central Uganda which he started under the Safe Food, Fair Food and Smallholder Pig Value Chains Development projects.

Erume’s academic background in microbiology and swine health placed him in an excellent position to contribute to these projects during his research fellowship at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

His work was supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) through an in-region postdoctoral fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

The cooperation visit will also provide the opportunity to discuss research collaboration with German scientists, possibly including some preliminary experiments, with the ultimate goal of developing longer-term collaboration through other DFG programs.

The cooperation visit program of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) provides postdoctoral researchers from sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) with the opportunity to make a three-month cooperation visit to a research institute in Germany.

We congratulate Erume on the successful application for this prestigious award and the placement at FLI Institute of Bacterial Infections and Zoonoses which also hosts the World Organization for Animal Health and national reference laboratory for porcine brucellosis.

Erume’s application was supported by ILRI scientists Danilo Pezo, Delia Grace, Fred Unger and Kristina Roesel.

 

ILRI graduate fellow to attend international training course on modelling of epidemiological data

John Muthii Muriuki, ILRI graduate fellow attached to the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa project (photo credit: ILRI/John M. Muriuki).

The South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) has invited John Muthii Muriuki, a graduate fellow at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), to attend its fifth annual clinic on the meaningful modelling of epidemiological data. The clinic takes place on 2-13 June 2014 at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa.

The highly competitive training course is offered in collaboration with the International Clinics on Infectious Disease Dynamics and Data (ICI3D) program and AIMS. Participants will include graduate students, postdoctoral students and researchers from Africa and North America.

The clinic focuses on the use of data in understanding infectious disease dynamics. Participants will work on epidemiological modelling projects that use real data to grapple with practical questions in a meaningful way.

Muriuki is studying for a Master’s degree in veterinary epidemiology and economics at the University of Nairobi. He was attached to the Kenya team of the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa project that is exploring the drivers of Rift Valley fever in the country and took part in sampling and community surveys in Garissa and Tana River.

He is excited at the opportunity to take part in the clinic and expects to learn more about modelling the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases.

“This clinic could not have come at a better time because I’m now developing a malaria transmission model in an irrigated set-up. Through this training, I expect to get more ideas to refine the model,” said Muriuki.

“I have a lot of interest in epidemiological modelling. The knowledge and skills gained from the clinic will enable me further my research work in this noble area,” he added.

Bernard Bett, a veterinary epidemiologist at ILRI and one of Muriuki’s supervisors, is confident that the training will enable Muriuki to refine the malaria transmission model being developed.

“It will also be a good opportunity for him to build networks with other professionals working on infectious disease research,” said Bett, who also leads the Kenya team of the Dynamic Drivers of Disease project.