Climate change and endemic disease
Tracks
Assembly Hall
| Wednesday, April 10, 2024 |
| 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM |
| Assembly Room |
|
Sponsored By:
UKRI/ BBSRC
|
Overview
Sponsored by BBSRC
Details
How can collaborative partnerships between leading bioscience and biotechnology researchers and the UK livestock sector, including farmers and practitioners, drive the development of novel prevention and intervention solutions to endemic diseases?
With poor livestock health directly correlated to poor productivity, reducing the endemic disease burden of UK livestock is central to reducing carbon emissions from livestock agriculture. In this session, some of the teams leading the collaborative projects funded through the Endemic Livestock Diseases Initiative will share their initial research findings. A panel discussion with project leaders and industry stakeholders working on the Initiative will share their experiences of co-creation of knowledge with end users, and explore how effective collaborative research between industry and academia can deliver on-farm impacts to support a healthy, productive and sustainable food system.
The £11.5 million Endemic Livestock Diseases Initiative has been developed in consultation with UK agricultural businesses and policymakers, and is co-funded by BBSRC, Defra, Daera and Scottish Government. The 36 projects funded cover the breadth of digital agriculture, genetics and breeding, farm management, vaccine platforms and technologies, novel therapeutics and co-infection. To date, the Initiative has successfully facilitated the formation of 45 new industry partnerships, forging strong collaborative networks. Moreover, it has engaged with over 170 end-users including farmers, vets and policymakers to ensure that the research outcomes directly address their practical needs.
Session Sponsor & Speakers
Session Sponsored by BBSRC
Esther Harper
Senior Portfolio Manager, Farmed Animals
UKRI/ BBSRC
How can collaborative partnerships between leading bioscience and biotechnology researchers and the UK livestock sector, including farmers and practitioners, drive the development of novel prevention and intervention solutions to endemic diseases?
2:00 PM - 2:05 PM
Esther is member of the Business Interaction Unit at BBSRC UKRI, the UK’s largest public funder of agri-food research. She works across the breadth of livestock agriculture, aquaculture, and insect farming, bringing industry and academia together to facilitate innovation, collaboration, and co-creation of research with end users. She is leading the the development and delivery of the £3 million Sustainable Aquaculture Partnerships for Innovation investment in collaborative R&D, as well as the delivery of the Endemic Livestock Diseases Initiative, which brings together academia and businesses to deliver on-farm solutions to endemic diseases.
Dr Steven Van Winden
Royal Veterinary College
Johnes Disease control in dairy cattle; a critical approach to the use of diagnostic results
2:05 PM - 2:12 PM
Steven is Senior Lecturer in Production Animal Medicine. His expertise is best summarised as Population Medicine, where he can apply his background in individual animal care and his further training in epidemiology and management. This allows him to focus on interventions on a group level, making significant improvements on disease control by identifying and altering the specific areas for change.
Professor Eric Morgan
Professor in Veterinary Parasitology
Queens University Belfast
Helping farmers navigate changing parasite seasonality in ruminants under climate warming
2:12 PM - 2:19 PM
I am mainly interested in how climate influences the epidemiology of parasitic infections in animals. Internal parasites, especially helminths (worms), strongly affect the health and fitness of domestic and wild animals, and often have life stages that live away from the main host and are exposed to external environmental conditions. Climate - and climate change - is therefore a key driver of infection patterns. Management of parasites is further challenged by drug resistance, which undermines farming systems that rely on chemical use. Research in my group and with collaborators tries to advance and apply knowledge of the ecology of parasite populations to meet these challenges with better adapted management strategies. We use a combination of experiments on parasite biology, predictive computer modelling, and observations of field epidemiology. The work is global across farmed, companion and wild animal systems, including the troublesome issue of parasite and disease transmission across the wild-domestic interface. The outcomes we seek are more efficient and sustainable ways of managing parasite challenges to animal health, to support livelihoods, animal welfare and conservation in a rapidly changing world.
Mr Paul Crawford
Phd Student
Harper Adams University
Factors influencing endemic disease in the Northern Ireland sheep flock
2:24 PM - 2:31 PM
Dr. David Ewing
Senior Statistical Scientist In Animal Health And Welfare
Biomathematics And Statistics Scotland
Addressing barriers to sustainable control of gastro-intestinal nematodes in sheep: exploring novel control strategies using individual-based mathematical modelling
2:31 PM - 2:38 PM
My role is split between the management and provision of statistical consultancy and support to researchers at the Moredun Research Institute and the development of mathematical and statistical modelling approaches with applications principally in animal health and welfare but also more widely in ecology and epidemiology. I am experienced in the design and analysis of studies relating to animal health and welfare, and experiments, surveys and observational studies involving livestock on research farms and real farms, using both statistical and mathematical modelling techniques. Much of my consultancy work involves applying linear mixed models or generalised linear mixed models to complex experimental or observational data including animal health measurements and animal behaviour but I also use other statistical methods as appropriate to the objectives of projects. I have a particular interest in the development of stage-structured life cycle models of disease vectors, parasites and plant pests.
Dr Katharina Watson
Royal Agricultural University
Unravelling Enterococcus cecorum infection on UK broiler farms: correlating clinical signs with genomics, persistence, and animal behaviour
2:43 PM - 2:50 PM
Soumendu Chakravarti
The Pirbright Institute
Effects of co-infections on Marek’s disease in UK poultry farms and development of novel rapid diagnostic strategies
2:57 PM - 3:02 PM
I have more than 15 years of biomedical research experience, having led and been part of research project on different aspects of animal health and production. My research has focused on development of cost-effective rapid novel diagnostic methods of pathogens of veterinary importance, molecular epidemiological studies, genetics that correlated with production traits in farm animals, understanding genetic basis that determine cross-species transmission of viruses, virus-host interaction, virus-immune evasion strategies and molecular tools to develop disease resistant livestock.
Chair
Maggie Gill
Emertis Professor
University of Aberdeen
