USAID to host two-day online discussion on food safety research in developing countries

Fresh produce on sale in a local market in Malawi (photo credit: IFPRI).

 

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will hold a two-day online AgExchange on food safety beginning 20 June 2017 at 1000 hours EDT (GMT – 4). The online exchange will provide a forum to discuss key constraints and research priorities in food safety and overarching food safety needs, concerns and gaps in Feed the Future countries.

By taking part in the discussion, you will assist USAID to (1) identify gaps and weaknesses in global research for food safety and (2) evaluate the existing research portfolio to assess the need for research in food safety to ensure successful implementation of the United States Government Global Food Security Strategy.

The discussion will be facilitated by USAID staff. For more information, visit the event web page or email the Agrilinks Team at agrilinks@agrilinks.org.

 

Experts from Canada and India discuss latest developments in India’s pig sub-sector

A woman feeds her pigs in Nagaland, India (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

 

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works with various partner organizations in northeast India on research-for-development activities aimed at improving the smallholder pig sub-sector in the region. This has been possible through a long-term Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) signed in 2004.

These research activities were recently showcased at a one-day roundtable seminar held on 3 June 2017 at the ICAR National Research Centre on Pig (NRCP) in the northeast Indian state of Assam. The seminar was organized by the Canadian High Commission in India in collaboration with NRCP, the Indian Chamber of Commerce and the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

The event brought together researchers, industry stakeholders, government officials from different states in India, particularly from the northeast region, and representatives from ICAR and the Canadian High Commission to discuss the current status of India’s pig sub-sector, share information on the latest local and international developments in pig production and encourage collaboration and sharing of knowledge across the two countries.

ILRI scientist Ram Pratim Deka gave a special address on the institute’s pig-related research activities implemented in northeast India to date, namely:

• Pig appraisal studies in the states of Assam and Nagaland
• National agricultural innovation projects in the state of Nagaland
• Enhancing Livelihoods through Livestock Knowledge System project in the states of Nagaland and Mizoram
• Pig nutrition pilot project
• Livestock service provider model for delivery of minor veterinary services
• Analysis of hazards in raw pork sold in wet markets
• Epidemiological study and policy initiative on classical swine fever
• Framing of Nagaland’s pig breeding policy
• Technical support for rolling out pig breeding policy and artificial insemination in pigs

Among the other topics discussed during the seminar were principles of biosecurity, nutrition, emerging pig diseases, breeding, genetics and disease control.

View the presentation, Brief overview of ILRI’s activities in Northeast India on pig system development

 

Africa must take the lead in addressing global health challenges

zimbabweland

Credit: ILRI/Niels Teufel, Tanzania, 2014

The new Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a former minister of health in Ethiopia. Africa – at last – is now at the centre of global health policy. This is good news, as persistent ill-health and threats of disease emergence remain, and a different approach to the standard western solutions is required. This must be centred on a One Health approach – where human, veterinary and ecosystem health are seen together. This will require new approaches to research, policy and practice, and must be a major priority for WHO and member states.

But realising these ideals is easier said than done. What might a One Health approach look like for Africa? Today a new Special Issue of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (Biology) journal is published. Across 12 papers, this offers some clues. The issue is called…

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Join our webinar! Designing projects for improving nutrition through animal source foods—Tomorrow, 4 May

ILRI Clippings

The following announcement comes from Jennie Lane,
animal health and livelihoods technical advisor for Land O’Lakes International Development.

Land O’Lakes International Development and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are pleased to announce a webinar option for their meeting tomorrow, 4 May, in Nairobi, Kenya, on Animal Source Foods for Nutrition Impact: Evidence and Good Practices for Informed Project Design. This one-day event will be held on the ILRI Nairobi campus from 8:30am to 5:00pm on Thu 4 May 2017. While the physical workshop is by invitation only due to space limitations, portions of the day’s presentations and discussions will be available as recordings later.  

Webinar invitation

Animal Source Foods for Nutrition Impact:

Evidence and Good Practices
for Informed Project Design

4 May 2017

Click here to register

The webinar will stream audio during the day from approximately 8:45am–5pm East Africa Time. A detailed agenda is available…

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Vietnam launches report on better managing risks to food safety

ILRI news

Cover of the new World Bank food safety in Vietnam report: Please check back here in another three days to get a link to the report online.

This post is written by Chi Nguyen, communications officer for ILRI in East and Southeast Asia (c.nguyen [at] cgiar.org).

A report launched this week on managing risks to food safety in Vietnam was prepared by the World Bank and other research and development partners at the request of the Government of Vietnam. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) was the lead technical partner in development of the report.

Food Safety Risk Management in Vietnam: Challenges and opportunities, launched on 27 Mar 2017, includes an urgent call for better management of food safety issues in Vietnam and more effective communications to raise public awareness of food safety issues. The report found that the primary cause of food-borne illness in Vietnam comes from…

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New Nutrition Knowledge Bank gives direct access to expert nutritional advice via mobile phones

ILRI news

Tanzanian woman on her cell phone (photo credit: CCAFS/Cecilia Schubert).

A new open-access Nutrition Knowledge Bank has been created as part of a GSMA mNutrition initiative to help tackle malnutrition in Africa and Asia. This collection of content on good nutritional practices includes factsheets and mobile messages for anyone to download and use. Funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the mNutrition project aims to deliver nutrition information to 3 million people in 12 developing countries.

Adequate nutrition is critical to the physical and mental development of children and to long-term human health, but one out of three people in developing countries suffers from micronutrient deficiency. Experts consider poor access to agricultural and health information a major barrier to the uptake of improved nutritional practises, particularly by women and vulnerable groups in marginalized areas.

mNutrition delivers content to people at risk of malnutrition in Bangladesh, Ghana…

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Agrilinks and Microlinks to host webinar on safety of animal-source foods for improved nutrition

Locally made beef stew sold in Bagnon market at Yopougon, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

What are the key food safety issues related to livestock production and animal-source foods and what are their potential impacts on human health and nutrition?

Join an upcoming joint Agrilinks and Microlinks webinar on 25 January 2017 at 0900–1100 hours EDT where experts will share effective approaches to improving food safety and quality related to livestock production.

Attendees will learn about improving food safety and quality throughout the livestock value chain including production methods, processing and storage technologies, risk assessments, policy impacts, opportunities for the private sector and consumer education.

• Hung Nguyen-Viet from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) will pay particular attention to the relationship between animal-source foods and the impact of foodborne disease, while also considering how traditional and gender roles in livestock and fish value chains can impact exposure and risk.
• Dennis Karamuzi will outline the steps taken by the Government of Rwanda and the Rwanda Dairy Competitiveness Project II to increase the supply of clean milk for rural and urban consumers.
• Silvia Alonso from ILRI will discuss the role of informal markets in meeting the nutrition needs of the most vulnerable communities and the tension between food safety, livelihoods and access to food that characterize such markets. She will present new research aimed to investigate how ‘light-touch’ interventions in informal dairy markets could give win-win outcomes on health and livelihoods.

Presenters will discuss new actions taking place in development that help provide clean, safe and affordable animal-source foods to poor urban and rural households. In addition, the webinar will touch on the role of animal-source foods in the global burden of foodborne disease and why the safety of animal-source foods plays an important role in food security.

Register for the webinar

 

Can the livestock sector find the elusive ‘win-win’ on drug resistance?

A livestock health worker prescribes drugs to a dairy farmer in Bangladesh (photo credit: IFPRI/Akram Ali, CARE Bangladesh).

An opinion piece by International Livestock Research Institute veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace shines the spotlight on the global challenge of antimicrobial resistance and the need to tackle the problem while finding a balance between low access to antimicrobials (particularly in developing countries) and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

She writes:

“Antimicrobial use is a matter of access versus excess. Somehow, we must reduce the use of antimicrobial drugs in animals to tackle growing levels of drug resistance while ensuring that these life- and livelihood-saving treatments reach those who really need them.”

Read the complete article, Can the livestock sector find the elusive ‘win-win’ on drug resistance? Devex, 16 December 2016

 

ILRI scientist receives international award for ecohealth research

Hung Nguyen-Viet (left) receives the 2016 International Association for Ecology and Health (IEAH) ‘Exceptional Early Career Contribution to the Field of EcoHealth’ award from former IEAH president Jakob Zinsstag (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).

Hung Nguyen-Viet, a senior scientist in food safety and ecohealth at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), was named the winner of the 2016 International Association for Ecology and Health (IAEH) Exceptional Early Career Contribution to the Field of EcoHealth Award together with Jonathan Kingsley of the University of Melbourne.

IAEH is a scholarly organization whose membership is drawn from all continents. Its mission is to strive for sustainable health of people, wildlife and ecosystems by promoting discovery, understanding and transdisciplinarity.

The award was given in recognition of Hung’s leadership, mentorship, research and writing on topics of domestic and global significance, including health, agriculture, food safety and infectious and zoonotic diseases at ILRI and at the Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research (CENPHER), Hanoi University of Public Health.

Hung received the award at the closing ceremony of the 4th International One Health Congress and 6th IAEH Biennial Congress held in Melbourne, Australia on 3–7 December 2016.

“I strongly believe that ecohealth and One Health are good approaches to address complex health and environmental problems,” said Hung in his acceptance speech.

“Let us all work together and advance ecohealth,” he urged his colleagues.

Hung is a Vietnamese national and holds a PhD in Life and Environmental Sciences from Besançon, France. He co-founded and led CENPHER where he has been coordinating a regional program called Ecohealth Field Building Leadership Initiative in Southeast Asia from 2012 to 2016. In addition to his research role at ILRI, he is the institute’s acting regional representative for East and Southeast Asia based in Hanoi. He is also an honorary professor at Hanoi University of Public Health.

Congratulations, Hung!

 

An ‘urban zoo’ project in Kenya is helping unpack the spread of disease in urban environments

ILRI Clippings

A woman sorts through a heap of garbage at the Dandora dumping site among other people, cattle, pigs and storks, in Nairobi (photo credit: Simon Maina / AFP / Getty Images).

Written by Eric Fèvre

‘There are fears that Africa’s next major modern disease crisis will emerge from its cities. Like Ebola, it may well originate from animals. Understanding where it would come from and how this could happen is critical to monitoring and control.

‘Growth and migration are driving huge increases in the number of people living in Africa’s urban zones. More than half of Africa’s people are expected to live in cities by 2030, up from about a third in 2007.

‘The impact of this high rate of urbanisation on issues like planning, economics, food production and human welfare has received considerable attention. But there hasn’t been a substantive effort to address the effects on the transmission of the organisms—pathogens—that…

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