Tag Archives: Delia Grace

Frontline livestock disease research in, and for, Africa highlighted in White House conversation today

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Scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are working with many partners to improve control of major diseases of cattle in Africa.

East Coast fever in African cattle, one of the target diseases of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is included in a message today at the White House delivered by Raj Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. Shah will remind his audience that East Coast fever kills one cow every 30 seconds in Africa. Watch the live stream and join the conversation at 11am ET at the White House today, when Shah and others will answer questions about Innovations for Global Development.

Two other target diseases of ILRI’s are contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and trypanosomosis. All three diseases affect millions of the world’s poorest farmers. And all remain underfunded because they occur mostly in developing regions of the world.

ILRI recently produced three short films on research battles against these diseases.

CBPP: A new vaccine project starts
Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (known by its acronym, CBPP) is found throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, where it causes most harm in pastoralist areas. The disease kills up to 15% of infected animals, reduces the meat and milk yields of infected cows (milk yields drop by up to 90%), and reduces the ability of infected oxen to pull ploughs and do other kinds of farm work. An existing ‘live’ vaccine against this disease produces severe side effects and gives only limited protection.

Watch this short (runtime: 2:35) ILRI film, ‘Developing a Vaccine for a Highly Contagious Cattle Disease’, on the research recently begun at ILRI and its partner institutes, including the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, to develop a more effective vaccine against this form of acute cattle pneumonia. This research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Trypanosomosis: A genetic approach to its control
Trypanosomosis, called sleeping sickness in humans, is a wasting disease that maims and eventually kills millions of cattle in Africa and costs farmers billions of dollars annually.

In 2011, using the latest gene mapping and genomic technologies, researchers at ILRI’s Nairobi, Kenya, animal health laboratories and at institutes in the UK and Ireland identified two genes that enable Africa’s ancient N’Dama cattle breed to resist development of the disease when infected with the causative, trypanosome, parasite.

This breakthrough should eventually make it easier for Africa’s livestock breeders to breed animals that will remain healthy and productive in areas infested by the parasite-carrying tsetse fly. The international team that came together in this project is an example of the disciplinary breadth and agility needed to do frontline biology today, and the complex research approaches and technologies now needed to unravel fundamental biological issues so as to benefit world’s poor.

ILRI’s collaborating institutes in this work include Liverpool University; the Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh; Trinity College, Dublin; and the University of Manchester. The Wellcome Trust funded the bulk of the work in this project.

Watch this short (runtime: 5:28) ILRI film, ‘Battling a Killer Cattle Disease’, on the international partnership that made this breakthrough in trypanosomosis research.

 

Trypanosomosis: A community-based approach to its control
Another ILRI research team has been working with partners and livestock keepers in West Africa to develop safer ways to treat their cattle with drugs to protect them from trypanosomosis. Parasite resistance to the trypanocidal drugs used to treat and prevent this disease has emerged in many areas and is a growing problem for farmers and governments alike. This collaborative research team recently developed good practices in the use of trypanocides to slow the emergence of drug resistance in the parasites that cause the disease. This film describes the disease and these practices, known as ‘rational drug use’, clearly and in detail to help veterinary workers and farmers treat animals safely.

ILRI’s partners in this project include the Centre International de Recherche-Développement sur l’Elevage en Zone Subhumid, Freie Universität Berlin, Laboratoire Vétérinaire Centrale du Mali, Centre Régional de la Recherche Agricole Sikasso, Project de Lutte contra la Mouche Tsétsé et la Trypanosomose (Mali), Pan-African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign (Mali), University of Hannover, Direction Nationale de l’Elevage et l’Institut de Recherche Agronomique de Guinée, Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Control Unit (Ghana), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique du Bénin and the Nigerian Institute of Trypanosomiasis Research. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Watch this ILRI film, ‘Community-Based Integrated Control of Trypanosomosis in Cattle’ (runtime: 12.48), for clear instructions on how to deploy drugs to better control trypanosomosis over the long term.

New PNAS-published study discloses the ‘hot spots’, ‘warm spots’ and ‘cold spots’ of global livestock disease risk

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Mozambique, Garue, Lhate village

Small-scale livestock-dependent agriculture in developing countries makes up one of three trajectories of global disease risk; here, cattle belonging to a widowed farmer in Garue, Mozambique, are brought in for the night by a herdsboy (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).

‘Current drivers and future directions of global livestock disease dynamics’ is a special feature published in the (online) 16 May 2011 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the USA. The authors of the paper are Brian Perry, Delia Grace and Keith Sones.

Irish veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace leads a team researching animal health and food safety for trade at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya.

In the PNAS paper, the authors write: ‘The current era of globalization is seeing unprecedented movements of people, products, capital and information. Although this has obvious implications for economies and ecosystems, globalization also affects the health of people and animals. This paper reviews changing patterns of livestock disease over the last two decades, discusses the drivers of these patterns, and plots future trajectories of livestock disease risk in an effort to capitalize on our understanding of the recent past and provide a guide to the uncertain future.’

While acknowledging the complexity of disease dynamics, the authors point to three main drivers of changing livestock disease dynamics: ecosystem change, ecosystem incursion, and movement of people and animals. Underlying these dynamics are the growing demand for livestock products (the Livestock Revolution) and increasing human population size.

The authors identify three trajectories of global disease dynamics:
‘(i) the worried well in developed countries (demanding less risk while broadening the circle of moral concern)
‘(ii) the intensifying and market-orientated systems of many developing countries, where highly complex disease patterns create hot spots for disease shifts
‘(iii) the neglected cold spots in poor countries, where rapid change in disease dynamics is less likely but smallholders and pastoralists continue to struggle with largely preventable and curable livestock diseases.’

On the topics of major trends in disease dynamics, the authors point out that ‘From a centuries-long and whole-world perspective, human wealth and health continue to improve, and animal health parallels this, showing an overall dramatic decline of infectious disease and shift to noncommunicable diseases. (This has been called the second epidemiological transition; the first epidemiological transition was 10,000 y ago, when human settlement led to a surge in zoonoses and crowd-related diseases.)’

However, the authors also say that ‘Although control and management of many endemic diseases in rich countries have improved, new diseases such as BSE and HPAI have emerged. Some consider that we face a third epidemiological transition of disastrous consequence in which globalization and ecological disruption drive disease emergence and reemergence; as occurred in the first epidemiological transition (associated with neolithic sedentarization and the domestication of livestock), the worst of the emerging diseases are likely to be zoonotic.’

The authors go on to consider ‘the drivers with greatest influence on livestock disease dynamics, namely increasing human population size and prosperity and the related demand-driven Livestock Revolution. . . . [W]e identify three overarching sets of animal diseases dynamics and associated control. Each system is facing different risks to livestock health, each has different determinants of disease status and capacity to respond, and each requires different approaches to resolve them.’

‘In the background,’ they say, ‘is the significant component of the world’s livestock enterprises in the hands of the very poor, for whom intensification is just not a realistic option and who are likely to be most vulnerable to disease resurgence. . . .

‘Although we call these [very poor livestock] systems cold spots for disease dynamics and emergence, they are inevitably hot spots for endemic diseases, periodic epidemics (such as Newcastle disease, which regularly wipes out village flocks), and neglected zoonoses, which significantly impact on human health. Because of the low densities of livestock, their remoteness, and the slow change in husbandry practices, these are probably not hot spots for emerging diseases. . . .

‘This review is prognostic rather than therapeutic, presenting implications for livestock disease in the 21st century. In an increasingly globalized world, deepening of the existing balkanization of livestock health status will create inevitable instability. The main challenges are (i) to speed the convergence of livestock health between the intensifying and intensified regions through improved coordination, communication, and harmonization and (ii ) to improve resilience of smallholder livestock systems, including the support of viable exits from livestock keeping.’

Read the whole paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Current drivers and future directions of global livestock disease dynamics, by Brian Perry, Delia Grace and Keith Sones, 16 May 2011.

Read an ILRI brief: Why animals matter to health and nutrition, February 2011.

Read another ILRI News Blog article related to this topic: Adapting agriculture to improve human health—New ILRI policy brief, 21 February 2011.

Read an ILRI news release: Livestock boom risks aggravating animal ‘plagues,’ poses growing threat to food security and health of the world’s poor, 2 February 2011.

Adapting agriculture to improve human health–new ILRI policy brief

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A sleeping sickness patient in Soroti, Uganda

A child with sleeping sickness undergoes lengthy recovery treatment at a sleeping sickness clinic in Soroti, Uganda (photo credit: ILRI).

John McDermott, a Canadian deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and a veterinary epidemiologist by training, and Delia Grace, an Irish veterinary epidemiologist working in food safety and many other areas of livestock health, have written a new policy brief on agriculture-associated diseases.

This policy brief has recently been disseminated by McDermott and Grace at an international conference on the agriculture, nutrition and health interface in New Delhi and a conference on the ‘One Health’ approach to tackling human and animal health, held in Melbourne.

McDermott and Grace argue that the way we approach agriculture does not serve human interests as a whole. ‘In the past, agricultural research and development largely focused on improving the production, productivity and profitability of agricultural enterprises. The nutritional and other benefits of agriculture were not always optimized, while the negative impacts on health, well-being and the environment were often ignored. This was especially problematic for livestock systems, with especially complex negative and positive impacts on human health and well-being.’

They give as an example a side effect of agricultural intensification: disease. ‘Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a notorious example of a disease that was fostered by intensified agricultural production and spread through lengthened poultry value chains and the global movement of people and animals. Large-scale irrigation projects, designed to increase agriculture productivity, have created ecosystems conducive to schistosomiasis and Rift Valley fever.’

And the reason we fail to foresee the negative effects of some agricultural practices, they say, is because the responses to disease threats are often compartmentalized. ‘Instead of analysing the tradeoffs between agricultural benefits and risks, the agriculture sector focuses on productivity, while the health sector focuses on managing disease. A careful look at the epidemiology of diseases associated with agriculture, and past experience of control efforts, shows that successful management must be systems-based rather than sectorally designed.’

‘At least 61% of all human pathogens are zoonotic (transmissible between animals and people),’ they write, ‘and zoonoses make up 75% of emerging infectious diseases. A new disease emerges every four months; many are trivial, but HIV, SARS, and avian influenza illustrate the huge potential impacts. Zoonoses and zoonotic diseases recently emerged from animals are responsible for 7% of the total disease burden in least-developed countries.

‘As well as sickening and killing billions of people each year, these diseases damage economies, societies and environments. While there is no metric that captures the full cost of disease, assessments of specific disease outbreaks suggest the scale of potential impacts. . . .

‘. . . There are two broad scenarios that characterize poor countries. At one extreme are neglected areas that lack even the most basic services; in these “cold spots,” diseases persist that are controlled elsewhere, with strong links to poverty, malnutrition and powerlessness. At the other extreme are areas of rapid intensification, where new and often unexpected disease threats emerge in response to rapidly changing practices and interactions between people, animals and ecosystems. These areas are hot spots for the emergence of new diseases (of which 75% are zoonotic). They also are more vulnerable to food-borne disease, as agricultural supply chains diversify and outpace workable regulatory mechanisms.

‘. . . What cannot be measured cannot be effectively and efficiently managed. Addressing agriculture-associated disease requires assessing and prioritizing its impacts, by measuring not only the multiple burdens of disease but also the multiple costs and benefits of potential interventions—across health, agriculture and other sectors. . . .

‘But these assessment tools and results have rarely been integrated to yield a comprehensive assessment of the health, economic and environmental costs of a particular disease. . . .

‘The complexities of agriculture-associated diseases call for more integrated and comprehensive approaches to analyse and address them, as envisioned in One Health and Eco- Health perspectives . . . . These integrated approaches offer a broad framework for understanding and addressing complex disease: they bring together key elements of human, animal and ecosystem health; and they explicitly address the social, economic and political determinants of health. Both of these global approaches recognize agriculture- and ecosystem-based interventions as a key component of multi-disciplinary approaches for managing diseases. For example, food-borne disease requires management throughout the field-to-fork risk pathway. Zoonoses in particular cannot be controlled, in most cases, while disease remains in the animal reservoir. Similarly, agriculture practices that create health risks require farm-level intervention.

‘Systemic One Health and EcoHealth approaches require development and testing of methods, tools and approaches to better support management of the diseases associated with agriculture. The potential impacts justify the substantial investment required. . . .

‘As a basis for framing sound policies, information is needed on the multiple (that is, cross-sectoral) burdens of disease and the multiple costs and benefits of control, as well as the sustainability, feasibility and acceptability of control options. An example of cross-disciplinary research that effectively influenced policy is the case of smallholder dairy in Kenya. In the light of research by ILRI and partners, assessing both public health risks and poverty impacts of regulation, the health regulations requiring pasteurization of milk were reversed; the economic benefits of the change were later estimated at USD26 million per year. This positive change required new collaboration between research, government and non-governmental organizations and the private sector, as well as new ways of working . . . .

‘Many agriculture-associated diseases are characterized by complexity, uncertainty and high-potential impact. They call for both analytic thinking, to break problems into manageable components that can be tackled over time, and holistic thinking, to recognize patterns and wider implications as well as potential benefits.

‘The analytic approach is illustrated in the new decision-support tool developed to address Rift Valley fever in Kenya. In savannah areas of East Africa, climate events trigger a cascade of changes in environment and vectors, causing outbreaks of Rift Valley fever among livestock and (ultimately) humans. Improving information on step-wise events can lead to better decisions about whether, when, where and how to institute control . . . .

‘An example of holistic thinking is pattern recognition applied to disease dynamics, recognizing that emerging diseases have multiple drivers. A synoptic view of apparently unrelated health threats—the unexpected establishment of chikungunya fever in northern Italy, the sudden appearance of West Nile virus in North America, the increasing frequency of Rift Valley fever epidemics in the Arabian Peninsula, and the emergence of bluetongue virus in northern Europe—strengthens the suspicion that a warming climate is driving disease expansion generally.

‘Complex problems often benefit from a synergy of various areas of expertise and approaches. . . . Complex problems also require a longer term view, informed by the understanding that short-term solutions can have unintended effects that lead to long-term problems—as in the case of agricultural intensification fostering health threats. . . .

‘New, integrative ways of working on complex problems, such as One Health and EcoHealth, require new institutional arrangements. The agriculture, environment and health sectors are not designed to promote integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches to complex, cross-sectoral problems. But many exciting initiatives provide examples of successful institutional collaboration. . . .

‘Agriculture and health are intimately linked. Many diseases have agricultural roots—food-borne diseases, water-associated diseases, many zoonoses, most emerging infectious diseases, and occupational diseases associated with agrifood chains. These diseases create an especially heavy burden for poor countries, with far-reaching impacts. This brief views agriculture-associated disease as the dimension of public health shaped by the interaction between humans, animals and agro- ecoystems. This conceptual approach presents new opportunities for shaping agriculture to improve health outcomes, in both the short and long terms.

‘Understanding the multiple burdens of disease is a first step in its rational management. As agriculture-associated diseases occur at the interface of human health, animal health, agriculture and ecosystems, addressing them often requires systems-based thinking and multi-disciplinary approaches. These approaches, in turn, require new ways of working and institutional arrangements. Several promising initiatives demonstrate convincing benefits of new ways of working across disciplines, despite the considerable barriers to cooperation.’

Read the whole ILRI policy brief by John McDermott and Delia Grace: Agriculture-associated diseases: Adapting agriculture to improve human health, February 2011.

Livestock boom risks aggravating animal ‘plagues,’ poses growing threat to food security and health of world’s poor

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Shepherd in Rajasthan, India

Research released at conference calls for thinking through the health impacts of agricultural intensification to control epidemics that are decimating herds and endangering humans (Picture credit: ILRI/Mann).

Increasing numbers of domestic livestock and more resource-intensive production methods are encouraging animal epidemics around the world, a problem that is particularly acute in developing countries, where livestock diseases present a growing threat to the food security of already vulnerable populations, according to new assessments reported today at the International Conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition & Health in New Delhi, India.

‘Wealthy countries are effectively dealing with livestock diseases, but in Africa and Asia, the capacity of veterinary services to track and control outbreaks is lagging dangerously behind livestock intensification,’ said John McDermott, deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which spearheaded the work. ‘This lack of capacity is particularly dangerous because many poor people in the world still rely on farm animals to feed their families, while rising demand for meat, milk and eggs among urban consumers in the developing world is fueling a rapid intensification of livestock production.’

The global conference (http://2020conference.ifpri.info), organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute, brings together leading agriculture, nutrition and health experts to assess ways to increase agriculture’s contribution to better nutrition and health for the world’s most vulnerable people.

The new assessments from ILRI spell out how livestock diseases present ‘double trouble’ in poor countries. First, livestock diseases imperil food security in the developing world (where some 700 million people keep farm animals and up to 40 percent of household income depends on them) by reducing the availability of a critical source of protein. Second, animal diseases also threaten human health directly when viruses such as the bird flu (H5N1), SARS and Nipah viruses ‘jump’ from their livestock hosts into human populations.

McDermott is a co-author with Delia Grace, a veterinary and food safety researcher at ILRI, of a chapter on livestock epidemics in a new book called ‘Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction.’ This chapter focuses on animal plagues that primarily affect livestock operations—as opposed to human populations—and that are particularly devastating in the developing world.

‘In the poorest regions of the world, livestock plagues that were better controlled in the past are regaining ground,’ they warn, with ‘lethal and devastating impacts’ on livestock and the farmers and traders that depend on them. These ‘population-decimating plagues’ include diseases that kill both people and their animals and destroy livelihoods.

Livestock-specific diseases include contagious bovine ‘lung plague’ of cattle, buffalo and yaks, peste des petits ruminants (an acute respiratory ailment of goats and sheep), swine fever (‘hog cholera’) and Newcastle disease (a highly infectious disease of domestic poultry and wild birds). The world’s livestock plagues also include avian influenza (bird flu) and other ‘zoonotic’ diseases, which, being transmissible between animals and people, directly threaten human as well as animal health.

McDermott and Grace warn that new trends, including rapid urbanization and climate change, could act as ‘wild cards,’ altering the present distribution of diseases, sometimes ‘dramatically for the worse.’ The authors say developing countries need to speed up their testing and adoption of new approaches, appropriate for their development context, to detect and then to stop or contain livestock epidemics before they become widespread.

In a separate but related policy analysis to be presented at the New Delhi conference, McDermott and Grace focus on links between agricultural intensification and the spread of zoonotic diseases. The researchers warn of a dangerous disconnect: the agricultural intensification now being pursued in the developing world, they say, is typically focused on increasing food production and profitability, while potential effects on human health remain ‘largely ignored.’

A remarkable 61 percent of all human pathogens, and 75 percent of new human pathogens, are transmitted by animals, and some of the most lethal bugs affecting humans originate in our domesticated animals. Notable examples of zoonotic diseases include avian influenza, whose spread was primarily caused by domesticated birds; and the Nipah virus infection, which causes influenza-like symptoms, often followed by inflammation of the brain and death, and which spilled over to people from pigs kept in greater densities by smallholders.

The spread and subsequent establishment of avian influenza in previously disease-free countries, such as Indonesia, was a classic example, McDermott and Grace say, of the risks posed by high-density chicken and duck operations and long poultry ‘value chains,’ as well as the rapid global movement of both people and livestock. In addition, large-scale irrigation aimed at boosting agricultural productivity, they say, has created conditions that facilitate the establishment of the Rift Valley fever virus in new regions, with occasional outbreaks killing hundreds of people along with thousands of animals.

The economic impacts of such zoonotic diseases are enormous. The World Bank estimates that if avian influenza becomes transmissible from human to human, the potential cost of a resulting pandemic could be USD3 trillion. Rich countries are better equipped than poor countries to cope with new diseases—and they are investing heavily in global surveillance and risk reduction activities—but no one is spared the threat as growing numbers of livestock and easy movement across borders increase the chances of global pandemics.

But while absolute economic losses from livestock diseases are greater in rich countries, the impact on the health and livelihoods of people is worse in poor countries. McDermott and Grace point out, for example, that zoonotic diseases and food-borne illnesses associated with livestock account for at least 16 percent of the infectious disease burden in low-income countries, compared to just 4 percent in high-income nations.

Yet despite the great threats posed by livestock diseases, McDermott and Grace see a need for a more intelligent response to outbreaks that considers the local disease context as well as the livelihoods of people. They observe that ‘while few argue that disease control is a bad thing, recent experiences remind us that, if livestock epidemics have negative impacts, so too can the actions taken to control or prevent them.’

An exclusive focus on avian influenza preparedness activities in Africa relative to other more important disease concerns, they point out, invested scarce financial resources to focus on a disease that, due to a low-density of chicken operations and scarcity of domestic ducks, is unlikely to do great damage to much of the continent. And they argue that a wholesale slaughter of pigs in Cairo instituted after an outbreak of H1N1 was ‘costly and epidemiologically pointless’ because the disease was already being spread ‘by human-to-human transmission.’

McDermott and Grace conclude that to build surveillance systems able to detect animal disease outbreaks in their earliest stages, developing countries will need to work across sectors, integrating veterinary, medical, and environmental expertise in ‘one-health’ approaches to assessing, prioritizing and managing the risks posed by livestock diseases.

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More information on why animals matter to health and nutrition: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/3152 and https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/3149

Livestock and­ the environment: As the hard trade-offs look to get only get harder, more nuanced approaches to livestock development are needed

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Boy and goats in Rajasthan

Ramand Ram with goats in his family’s plot in Rajasthan, India. Intensifying mixed crop-and-livestock farming and helping livestock keepers diversify their sources of income can protect livestock livelihoods (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).

Researchers say that poor countries can protect both livestock livelihoods and environments by promoting measures such as sustainably intensifying mixed crop-and-livestock farming, paying livestock keepers for the ecosystem services they provide, helping pastoralists diversify their sources of income and managing the demand for livestock products.

Researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Animal Production Systems Group at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands, report in a proceedings published last November (2010) that there are ‘significant opportunities in livestock systems for improving environment management while also improving the livelihoods of poor people.’

The publication, titled The Role of Livestock in Developing Communities: Enhancing Multifunctionality, was co-published by the University of the Free State South Africa, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation and ILRI. The authors say that even though livestock production is already harming some environments, with such damage likely to increase in some regions in coming years due to an increasing demand from rapidly expanding populations in the developing world, new research-based options for livestock production can help improve both the livelihoods and environments of hundreds of millions of very poor people who raise farm animals or sell or consume their milk, meat and eggs.

The researchers propose shifting the debate on livestock and environment from one that focuses solely on the negative impacts of livestock production to one that embraces the complexity of livestock ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, particularly in developing countries, where livestock serve as a lifeline to many poor people.

The researchers say a good understanding of the environmental impacts of livestock production depends on distinguishing these impacts by region and production system and by addressing environmental problems along with problems of food insecurity and inequity.

The authors, who include ILRI scientists Mario Herrero, Phil Thornton, An Notenbaert, Shirley Tarawali and Delia Grace, recommend making a ‘fundamental shift’ in how demand for livestock products is seen and in adapting production systems to meet this demand. They suggest, for example, that policymakers consider ways of reducing demand for livestock products in (mostly industrialized) countries where (1) people are damaging their health by consuming too much meat, eggs and milk and (2) intensive ‘factory’ farming is damaging the environment.

The scientists also recommend finding ways of improving water management in livestock production. Recent findings show that livestock water use represents 31 per cent of the total water used for agriculture. The authors report that ‘in rangeland systems, water productivity can be improved by better rangeland management, which has the potential to reduce water use in agriculture by 45 per cent by 2050.’ Another promising idea is to begin paying livestock farmers for the rangeland water purification and other ecosystem services they maintain for the good of the wider community.

To reduce greenhouse gases from livestock systems, the authors recommend that efforts be put in place to intensify production systems in developing countries to produce more livestock products per unit of methane gas. ‘We need to provide significant incentives so that the marginal rangeland areas, often rich in biodiversity, can be protected for the benefit of farmers.’ Other options for reducing livestock-associated greenhouse gasses include improving animal diets, controlling animal numbers and shifting the kinds of breeds kept.

Although diseases transmitted between livestock and people also need to be addressed by research, the book notes that the ‘net effects of livestock on human health are positive,’ particularly due to livestock’s role in providing nourishing food for the poor and the contribution livestock herders make to regulating vast rangeland ecosystems, with their wildlife populations, which often helps prevent animals diseases from spilling over to human populations. Better use of disease control methodologies and investments will also help prevent the spread of these diseases.

The authors acknowledge that such changes in the way that livestock production is viewed will require a ‘subtle balancing act’ and commitments by a wide range of players in the scientific, development and policymaking communities. But without a more nuanced understanding of livestock production in the face of hard trade-offs between livestock and the environment, we could jeopardize the livestock livelihoods of many of the world’s ‘bottom billion’.

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This article is summary of the chapter ‘The Way Forward for Livestock and the Environment’ in the The Role of Livestock in Developing Communities: Enhancing Multifunctionality.

Download the full text

For more information read this related ILRI News article.

Livestock goods and bads: Filmed highlights of ILRI’s 2010 Annual Program Meeting

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At the 2010 Annual Program Meeting (APM) of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), held in April in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, several hundred participants debated and discussed the challenges facing the global livestock industry. ILRI and its partners are investigating ways to promote smallholder participation in livestock markets, more sustainable ways for livestock keepers to use natural resources, and ways to improve livestock pathways out of poverty.

Some of the presentations made during the meeting on the theme of 'Livestock: the Good, the Bad and the Gaps' were captured on film. We share three of those below.

The first film is a presentation by ILRI agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero on the important place of livestock for smallholder farmers in developing economies. Herrero highlights the many benefits livestock bring to the rural poor and argues that the rapidly expanding sector will need to be better managed and to reduce the environmental risks it poses if it is to continue to be productive. Herrero argues for an integrated assessment of the effects of the global livestock industry on various agro-ecosystems important to the poor.

In the second film, ILRI veterinary and food safety researcher Delia Grace discusses the human health risks associated with livestock keeping. Grace notes that zoonotic diseases (those transmitted between animals and people) and emerging infectious diseases (such as bird flu) are two of the well-known risks associated with livestock. But she says that animals provide a means of regulating diseases because they can serve as sentinels that lets communities and public health officials know of disease outbreaks before the diseases can affect humans. She makes the case for more research to address the many common misconceptions that exist about livestock and human health.

In the third film, Narayan Hedge, of India's BAIF Development Research Foundation, highlights the important role livestock play in providing a livelihood for nearly 700 million people in India. He makes an appeal for better livestock technologies, better infrastructure, and more efficient management of the industry so that more smallholder farmers can use livestock to escape poverty.

US$4.4 million awarded for research to build a climate model able to predict outbreaks of infectious disease in Africa

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Cow suffering from trypanosomosis

Scientists at the University of Liverpool, in the UK, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Kenya, are working with 11 other African and European partners on a US$4.4-million (UK£3 million-) project to develop climate-based models that will help predict the outbreak and spread of infectious diseases in Africa.

The researchers are working to integrate data from climate modelling and disease-forecasting systems so that the model can predict, six months in advance, the likelihood of an epidemic striking. The research, funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework, is being conducted in Ghana, Malawi and Senegal. It aims to give decision-makers the time needed to deploy intervention methods to stop large-scale spread of diseases such as Rift Valley fever and malaria, both of which are transmitted by mosquitoes.

It is thought that climate change will change global disease distributions, and although scientists know a lot about the climate triggers for some diseases, they don’t know much about how far into the future these disease events can be predicted. This new project brings together experts to investigate the links between climate and vector-borne diseases, including ‘zoonotic’ diseases, which are transmissible between animals and humans.

ILRI veterinary researcher Delia Grace says that diseases shared by people and animals are under-investigated although they are critically important for public health. ‘Fully 60% of all human diseases, and 75% of emerging diseases such as bird flu, are transmitted between animals and people,’ she said.

ILRI geneticist Steve Kemp said that the project is making use of ILRI’s advanced genomics capacities to analyse pathogens from the field and to integrate the data collected on both pathogen distribution and climatic factors. ‘From ILRI’s point of view,’ Kemp said, ‘this project is particularly exciting because it brings strong climate and weather expertise that complements systems recently built by ILRI and its partners to detect outbreaks of Rift Valley fever and to determine its spread.’

The new project also complements ILRI’s ongoing work to better control trypansomosis in West African livestock, a disease transmitted by tsetse flies. Trypanosomosis, which is related to sleeping sickness in humans, causes devastating losses of animals—along with animal milk, meat, manure, traction and other benefits—across a swath Africa as big as continental USA. Members of the new modeling project will conduct research in some of the same locations as ILRI’s West African trypanosomosis project, Kemp explained, and work with some of the same partner organizations, which should generate synergies that benefit both projects.

The risk of epidemics in tropical countries increases shortly after a season of good rainfall—when heat and humidity allow insects, such as mosquitoes, to thrive and spread diseases. Matthew Baylis, from Liverpool’s School of Veterinary Science, explained how this works with Rift Valley fever: ‘Rift Valley fever can spread amongst the human and animal population during periods of heavy rain, when floodwater mosquitoes flourish and lay their eggs. If this rainfall occurs unexpectedly during the dry season, when cattle are kept in the villages rather than out on the land, the mosquitoes can infect the animals at the drinking ponds. Humans can then contract the disease by eating infected animals. Working with partners in Africa, we can bring this information together to build a much more accurate picture of when to expect epidemics.

Andy Morse, from Liverpool’s School of Environmental Sciences, said the project combines historical and contemporary climate data with disease incidence information, including that for vector-borne diseases, as well as integrating monthly and seasonal forecasts. The resulting single, seamless, forecast system, Morse said, should allow projections of disease risk to be made beyond the conventional predictable time limit. ‘All this information will be fed into a decision-support system to be developed with decision-makers on national health issues’ in the three target countries.

The project was launched at a conference at the University of Liverpool on 19 April 2010.

For more information, contact ILRI scientist Steve Kemp. ILRI email contacts are formatted as follows: f.surname@cgiar.org: replace ‘f’ with the staff member’s first initial and replace ‘surname’ with the staff member’s surname.

The 13 research partners:
Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Italy), Centre de Suivi Ecologique (Senegal), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (UK), Fundació Privada Institut Català de Ciències del Clima (Spain), Institut Pasteur de Dakar (Senegal), International Livestock Research Institute (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), Universitaet zu Koeln (Germany), University Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (Senegal), University of Liverpool (UK), University of Malawi (Polytechnic & College of Medicine), University of Pretoria (South Africa)

Livestock goods and bads: Background and evidence

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On Thursday 15 April, ILRI staff, Board members and partners gather in Addis Ababa for the first day of the annual program meeting. The first major plenary session mobilizes a range of speakers on different dimensions of the ‘goods and bads’ issue. The presentations are online:

See a short video interview with IFPRI’s David Spielman in livestock research priorities.

We also asked leaders of ILRI research groups to briefly present what each is doing in terms of livestock goods and bads, and which research gaps need to be filled.

Livestock goods and bads: Perspectives from ILRI research

View more presentations from ILRI CGIAR.

This post is part of a series associated with the ILRI Annual Program Meeting in Addis Ababa, April 2010. More postings …

How livestock diseases and their control impact poor people

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This themed issue of Philosophical Transactions B, provides an overview of some of the issues relating to infectious diseases of livestock.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, the world is faced with a changing landscape of infectious diseases that affect man and animals. Most livestock pathogens that emerge and re-emerge are capable of being transmitted to man and an increasing number are distributed by insect vectors. Globalisation defines the world of pathogens and the recent emergence and spread of swine flu provides a topical illustration of the threats presented by zoonotic viruses that can be moved rapidly around the world by the occupants of our ‘global village’. Whilst distribution via air transport represents an extreme, the transmission of pathogens by insect vectors is increasingly linked to the effects climate change and new vector-borne diseases, such as bluetongue, are now occurring for the first time in Northern Europe.

However, old and persistent diseases remain in most parts of the world must be dealt with. Some, such as foot and mouth disease, present significant ongoing restrictions to national and international trade and may have devastating financial impacts when they are introduced in to FMD-free areas.

The future looks to be much, much more of the same. The scientific community will need to be fleet-of-foot to deal with some unexpected disease threats and the world of zoonotic infections will drive the animal and human disease research specialists to work closer together.

A ‘One Medicine’ way of working will be increasingly necessary to optimise control of disease at the livestock-man interface and all major livestock diseases will need to be considered for their potential to interrupt or damage the pipeline of food supplies – especially if effective control is lost.

This special issue includes articles by ILRI scientists Brian Perry and Delia Grace and another by  Solenne Costard et al. They describe the impacts of livestock diseases and their control on growth and development processes that are ‘pro-poor’.

Taking a value-chain approach that includes keepers, users and eaters of livestock, they identify diseases that are road blocks on ‘three livestock pathways out of poverty’. They discuss livestock impacts on poverty reduction and review attempts to prioritize the livestock diseases relevant to the poor. They note that a high impact of a disease does not guarantee high benefits from its control and recommend taking other factors into consideration, including technical feasibility and political desirability.

They conclude their paper by considering how we might better understand and exploit the roles of livestock and improved animal health by posing three speculative questions on the impact of livestock diseases and their control on global poverty:
(1) How can understanding livestock and poverty links help disease control?
(2) If global poverty reduction were the aim of a livestock disease control program, how would that program differ from our current model?
(3) How much of the impact of livestock diseases on poverty is due to disease control policies rather than the diseases themselves?

Nine myths about livestock: One conclusion

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The Journal of Animal Science this month features an invited review by ILRI and partners highlighting how livestock benefit the health and nutrition of poor people and dispelling some common, and dangerous, livestock myths.
 

Myths about livestock in developing countries abound. The authors of this invited review, ‘Role of livestock in human nutrition and health for poverty reduction in developing countries’, published in the Journal of Animal Science (JAS) (November 2007), and also featured in the JAS editorial, outline the links between livestock-keeping and the physical well-being of the poor and de-bunk a few commonly held misconceptions. The authors argue that these limit livestock development and the potential of livestock to reduce poverty. They conclude that the benefits of livestock on health and nutrition of poor people have largely been ignored even though they offer big opportunities for improving welfare and wellbeing.

Livestock contributions being hampered by myths
ILRI agricultural economist and lead author of the paper, Tom Randolph, says: ‘Livestock are well positioned to contribute to economic progress and social transformation as a strategic asset of the poor, but several misconceptions about livestock are misguiding policy and hampering development interventions. Too many opportunities are being lost due to misinformation and myths.

‘We have to take developing-country contexts into account and recognize the complex role livestock play in the livelihoods of the poor.
‘We argue that for poor people in low-income countries the nutritionally related health risks of animal-source foods are relatively small, as are the negative environmental impacts of livestock production, when compared to the much larger benefits of livestock-keeping to livelihoods and human well-being for poverty reduction.’

 Editorial: The role of livestock in developing countries
‘The purpose [of this invited review] was to highlight the importance of livestock in the global effort to alleviate poverty and promote human health, for those involved in livestock research, for policymakers, and those who are the beneficiaries of these efforts. We also wanted to provide a scholarly analysis of the facts as well as some of the misconceptions concerning the contribution of livestock to the health and economic progress of developing countries.

‘In fact, as Dr Randolph and colleagues observe in their review, “Animal-source foods are particularly appropriate for combating malnutrition and a range of nutritional deficiencies,” and, “livestock clearly offer the most efficient utilization of resources that would otherwise go unexploited. . .,” and thereby contribute to economic development as well. Thus, “livestock keeping” has been, and will continue to be, integral to improving the well-being of people in developing countries, both from a health and nutrition perspective and from a socioeconomic one. However, as pointed out by Randolph and co-authors, there is a critical need for objective, scientifically sound studies on the role of, and methods to promote, improved livestock production in developing countries.’

— MA Mirando, Symposia Editor and LP Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief. Editorial: The role of livestock in developing countries. Journal of Animal Science. American Society of Animal Science. Vol 85. No 11. November 2007.

Livestock keeping is critical and highly complex
This review summarizes how livestock help reduce poverty through better human nutrition and health; it also captures the complexity of the livelihood strategies used by the poor, the role of livestock and their links to human nutrition and health. The authors, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Swiss Tropical Institute, Cornell University, National Institute of Public Health (Cuernavaca), University of Toronto, the International Potato Centre (CIP), University of California, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), incorporate perspectives from multiple disciplines including animal science, economics, epidemiology and public health, to provide a comprehensive review.

 The role of livestock in livelihood strategies of the poor
Livestock keeping is critical for many of the poor in the developing world, serving many livelihood objectives and providing several pathways out of poverty. Livestock keeping also affects an indispensable asset of the poor –their own nutrition and health.

The many reasons poor people keep livestock — for food, income, manure, traction, status, and as bank accounts — mean that the role that animals play in household well-being is highly complex.

Myths about livestock in developing countries
A key objective of the invited review was to explore misconceptions hampering efforts to capitalize on the nutritional and health benefits that livestock can provide poor people who live largely on starchy diets.

Co-author, food safety specialist and veterinary scientist on joint appointment with ILRI and Cornell University Delia Grace says: ‘As we were undertaking this review, we realized that there were a number of common and dangerous myths about the role of livestock in developing countries that we needed to explore. 

‘From a public health perspective, we address both health determinants, for example poverty and inequality, and specific health risks, including animal-to-human transmitted diseases and food-borne diseases.

‘We have emphasized a “harm reduction” approach, which is more appropriate, as opposed to the unrealistic and unachievable goal of and “zero risk”.

Nine Myths About Livestock in Developing Countries
Myth 1: More livestock and eating more animal products are bad for poor countries.
Reality:  Animal products are uniquely suited to combat malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency in poor countries.

Myth 2: Livestock keepers are livestock eaters.
Reality: Most production is sold off-farm and the added income does not necessarily translate into significant improvements (or equitable improvements) in household nutrition.

Myth 3: Livestock keeping is an inefficient strategy for feeding the poor.
Reality: There is negligible competition between livestock and people for food resources given use by poor farmers of marginal lands and crops for livestock feed.

Myth 4: The state alone is the best manager of zoonoses and food-borne diseases.
Reality: Alternative systems involving the private sector and communities can deliver sustainable and affordable disease control measures.

Myth 5: Medical and veterinary disciplines operate best independently in controlling zoonotic diseases.
Reality: The divided responsibility for zoonoses control leads to under-estimating its importance and the benefits from its control.

Myth 6: We know which zoonoses matter to the poor.
Reality: With a dearth of information on the priority of different diseases, resources are being allocated irrationally.

Myth 7: Quantity, not quality, of food is what matters to poor countries.
Reality: Biological contamination causes 2 billion illnesses annually and food safety scares hit consumers and producers hard even in the poorest countries.

Myth 8: Food safety standards are blocking poor farmers from the big market opportunities.
Reality: The poorest don’t sell or buy in supermarkets and have little prospect of entering international trade.

Myth 9: Food safety systems should aim for zero risk to the public.
Reality: Zero risk is both impossible and unaffordable and the appropriate level of risk in poor countries is not necessarily the same as that for rich countries.

Download Brief: Nine Myths About Livestock in Developing Countries

Co-author and epidemiologist with ILRI and the Swiss Tropical Institute Esther Schelling concludes:
‘Dismantling the myths raises awareness that conventional services and traditional approaches usually only reach some parts of the population. They tend to miss remote communities or vulnerable groups such as women and children.

‘More equitable solutions can be devised by thinking outside the box. There are already some examples of promising new approaches. We now need to examine them for their potential to be scaled up in sustainable ways.’

For more information contact:

Tom RandolphTom Randolph
Agricultural Economist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: t.randolph@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3067

OR

Delia Grace
Veterinary Epidemiologist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: d.grace@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3070

OR

Esther Schelling
Veterinary Epidemiologist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: e.schelling@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3069