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…

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Arguing the case for massive investments in One Health

Emerging and neglected zoonoses have often been managed sectorally, but recent decades have shown, in case after case, the benefits of One Health management.

The growing body of evidence suggests the time has come to make the bigger case for massive investment in One Health to transform the management of neglected and emerging zoonoses, annually saving the lives of millions of people as well as hundreds of millions of animals whose production supports and nourishes billions of impoverished people.

Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) sets out a ‘Big 5’ framework for One Health:

1. Join up health resources: Share health resources across human and veterinary sectors
2. Control zoonoses in animal reservoirs
3. Detect disease outbreaks early
4. Prevent pandemics
5. Add value to health research and development

Read the full post on the CGIAR Development Dialogues blog

Read an earlier full version of this story on the ILRI News blog

 

ILRI food safety researchers present on health impacts of aflatoxins in animal-source foods

Aflatoxins are highly toxic fungal by-products produced by certain strains of Aspergillus flavus in grains and other crops. Consumption of very high levels of aflatoxins can cause acute illness and death. Chronic exposure to aflatoxins is linked to liver cancer, especially where hepatitis is prevalent, and this is estimated to cause as many as 26,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa.

Aflatoxins in contaminated animal feed not only result in reduced animal productivity, but the toxins can end up in products like milk, meat and eggs, thus presenting a health risk to humans. Of these animal-source food products, milk has the greatest risk because relatively large amounts of aflatoxin are carried over and milk is consumed especially by infants.

As part of knowledge exchange on the latest research developments in the area of aflatoxins and food safety, Delia Grace and Johanna Lindahl, food safety researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), presented on aflatoxins, animal health and the safety of animal-source foods at a virtual briefing organized by the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, a network of 37 bilateral donors, multilateral agencies and international financing institutions working to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable rural development.

Their presentation began with an overview of aflatoxins and how livestock and fish get exposed to aflatoxins. This was followed by a discussion on the impact of aflatoxins on animal health and production, how aflatoxins in crops move through the food chain to end up in animal-source foods and ways to manage the risk of aflatoxins in animals and animal-source foods.

The need for evidence-based approaches in developing standards for animal feeds was highlighted, as well as the need for risk-based regulation and legislation to provide guidelines on safety issues such as appropriate management of aflatoxin-contaminated feed.

The presentation concluded with a summary of the key messages and policy recommendations, followed by a question-and-answer session.

Watch the recording of the briefing (approx. 34 minutes)

Jump to the question-and-answer session [16:37]

More information on research on aflatoxins and food safety is available in a set of 19 research briefs published in November 2013 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The briefs were co-edited by Laurian Unnevehr of IFPRI and Delia Grace of ILRI.

Read more about ILRI’s research projects on aflatoxins

• Capacity and action for aflatoxin reduction in eastern Africa
• Measuring and mitigating the risk of mycotoxins in maize and dairy products for poor consumers in Kenya

 

ACIAR newsletter highlights ILRI project on risk assessment for improved food safety in Vietnam

Hmong butchers selling pig meat from the indigenous Hmong black pig, recognizable from its thick layer of fat below the skin, Bac Ha, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam (photo credit: ILRI/Jo Cadilhon).

The July 2014 issue of Partners Magazine, the flagship publication of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), features an article on an ACIAR-funded project led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) that uses a risk assessment approach towards improving the safety of pig and pork value chains in Vietnam.

Hung Nguyen-Viet, an ILRI scientist and deputy director of the Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research (CENPHER) at the Hanoi School of Public Health, is playing a lead role in the project which is working to strengthen local capacity on risk assessment for effective management of food safety along the entire value chain.

Read the article, Food safety from farm to fork

Read more about CENPHER in their new report, CENPHER five year report 2009–2014: From a research project to a research center

 

ILRI scientists present at international ecohealth conference

Typical mixed crop-livestock farming of western Kenya. The EcoHealth 2014 conference will discuss ecohealth research under the theme ‘Connections for health, ecosystems and society’ (photo credit: ILRI/Charlie Pye-Smith).

A group of scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) will join hundreds of ecohealth researchers from all over the world for the fifth biennial conference of the International Association for Ecology and Health which begins today, 11 August 2014, in Montréal, Canada.

Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI, gives a keynote address on 13 August and several ILRI scientists will give oral and poster presentations. Delia Grace and Johanna Lindahl from ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses program will lead a special session on integrative approaches to disease modelling.

The four-day conference, dubbed EcoHealth 2014, is co-hosted by the Canadian Community of Practice in EcoHealth and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Well-Being, Health, Society and Environment of the Université du Québec at Montréal. The overall theme of the conference is ‘Connections for health, ecosystems and society’.

The three main sub-themes of the conference are:

• Drivers of change to health, ecosystems and society: Integrating understanding from global to local scales
• Innovations in theory, methods and practice
• Moving between research and action: Mobilizing knowledge to benefit health, ecosystems, and society

In addition to the keynote addresses and presentations during plenary, parallel and poster sessions, the conference will hold an international discussion forum on 12 August. The discussion forum is a combined webinar and face-to-face activity that will focus on the conference statement addressing ‘Ecohealth and Climate Change’.

The webinar will involve a panel of international discussants (offsite and onsite) who will address synergies, connections and next steps relevant to the conference statement and their work. Two webinar sessions are planned in order to optimize participation across time-zones.

Register for the webinar

Find out more about the conference

 

ILRI gives ‘one health’ training to support pig health project in the Philippines

ILRI Asia

ILRI’s Fred Unger (back row with glasses) and Jackie Escarcha (second left, front row) with the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development team and other participants of an ‘ecohealth’ and ‘one health’ seminar held in Pampanga, Philippines in July 2014 (photo credit: ILRI).

On 30-31 July 2014, Fred Unger, a veterinary epidemiologist and Centre for International Migration and Development (CIM) expert with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), visited the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD) project site in Pampanga, Philippines and served as a resource speaker for a ‘seminar on ecohealth and one health: An introduction‘. Unger was accompanied, at the seminar, by Jackie Escarcha from ILRI’s office in Los Banos.

The PCAARRD project, represented by Edwin Villar, the director for livestock division, held the introductory seminar for the project team to gain basic understanding of ‘ecohealth’ and ‘one health’ approaches…

View original post 146 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.