AnimalNet Dec. 19/03
Game farm
maligned
Two more
South Korean farms feared hit by potentially deadly bird flu
Alberta pork
urges provincial government to provide BSE support to hog producers
Livestock
takes lead on path from poverty
North
Carolina scientists divided over impact of hog waste on environment
Cow ambles
to the sequencing house
Experimental
vaccine stops shipping fever in feeder calves
Pork Board
names new top scientist
“RabNet”
version 2 and the new WHO rabies web site are now online
13 an
unlucky number for Aussie cattle
Veterinary
inspections
Implantation
or injectable dosage form new animal drugs; flunixin meglumine solution
how to subscribe
Game
farm maligned
December 19, 2003
Yukon News
10
Shirley Ford, Ford Elk Farms Ltd., Hot Springs Road, writes regarding the recent
articles in the Yukon News on the disease issue on the LaPrairie Bison Ranch to
say that it looks like bovine viral diarrhea was not imported into the Yukon.
This could have been a significant factor in the recent court case against
LaPrairie.
It appears the government has jumped to conclusions before all of the facts were
available.
But all of the damage to this farm is done.
With headlines of diseased bison continually hitting the front page, how can a
farmer sell animals or bison meat?
The article states that the disease eats away at the animal's hooves, skin, and
diseased animals become lethargic, won't eat, appear lame and develop severe
diarrhea.
Two
more South Korean farms feared hit by potentially deadly bird flu
December 19, 2003
Agence France Presse/ Reuters/AP
SEOUL - Officials were cited as saying Friday that South Korean health
authorities suffered a setback in their battle to contain a bird flu outbreak as
two more farms were feared hit by the virus potentially deadly to humans,.
The stories say that the new suspected cases were reported Thursday at duck
farms located between 3.5 and 4 kilometers (2.2-2.5 miles) from the chicken farm
where the first outbreak was confirmed Monday in Umseong, 130 kilometres (80
miles) southeast of Seoul.
Also of note, South Korea's agriculture minister tucked into a meal of duck at a
restaurant on Friday in a bid to show poultry was safe after an outbreak of a
highly contagious strain of bird flu.
Huh was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his ministry that,
"Chicken and duck meat distributed in markets is safe. Even affected meat
should be harmless to humans if it is boiled.”
So far, authorities have ordered the culling of more than 137,000 ducks and
chickens in the region, as well as the destruction of all duck and chicken eggs
within a three-kilometer (two-mile) radius of the farm where the outbreak
started.
Earlier this week, tests found the bird flu was caused by the H5N1 virus.
But authorities are still investigating whether it is the deadly H5N1-97 strain
that crossed from chickens to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six people.
Alberta
pork urges provincial government to provide BSE support to hog producers
December 19, 2003
Farmscape (Episode 1409)
Alberta's pork industry is urging the provincial government to come across with
financial support help producers in that province who are struggling to contend
with the effects of the BSE crisis. Difficulties in the swine industry actually
date back to 1998-99 when hog prices collapsed, followed by successive years of
drought with mediocre hog prices and this year a tremendous spinout from BSE.
Alberta Pork Assistant General Manager Paul
Hodgman says these developments were all outside the control of hog producers.
Clip-Paul Hodgman-Alberta Pork
Last year tried to get in on some of the drought offset programs that were
available in Alberta but none of them were really designed to address the needs
of most hog producers unless they had a large land base, so we were unsuccessful
there. This year we can definitely show, with the research that we've done and
others have done independently, that there is a definite cost due to the BSE
that we're now incurring in terms of rendering, trucking, disposal of animals,
the lack of ability in many places to use meat and bone meal as a result of
this. We estimate there's probably about a 16 dollar touch to us because of BSE.
These are things that are completely outside of the control of the pork
producer. There have been programs nationally and provincially to look after the
cattle industry in their time of need, and rightly so. We're very supportive of
that but other commodities have been affected just as much. Some have gotten
some forms of assistance here in Alberta but the pork industry has not been able
to receive anything.
Hodgman says there are several long term issues to be addressed, but the short
term problems are pressing, they need to be dealt with and producers are getting
desperate. For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council
Livestock
takes lead on path from poverty
December 19, 2003
Guelph Mercury
A11
Clare Illingworth
Globally, livestock are raised primarily for food...but to millions of people in
developing countries, these animals can provide a pathway out of poverty, says
one Guelph researcher.
As the new deputy director general for the International Livestock Research
Institute (ILRI), Prof. John McDermott of the University of Guelph's department
of population medicine, is helping to make this pathway easier. He's co-ordinating
livestock research projects that he hopes will benefit farmers and communities
in the world's poorest areas -- sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.
"Raising healthy animals can make a major difference to the lives of poor
people," says McDermott. "Livestock research and veterinary work are
two ways we can help."
For the past six years, McDermott has worked with the International Livestock
Research Institute in studying the epidemiology and control of infectious
tropical diseases. Spending the bulk of his professional career in Africa, he's
seen how livestock can buffer the vulnerability of these poor rural farmers -
who comprise 70 per cent of Africa's population - from drought and civil unrest.
In his directorial role, McDermott is working to reduce poverty and build
sustainable economic growth through livestock research. Livestock represent the
only banking system for the majority of poor rural people, he says. Using
smaller animals for currency and larger livestock as long-term investments,
there's little need for banks. But that means a family's fate may rest on their
animals staying healthy and fertile.
But maintaining livestock health reaches beyond its apparent monetary value.
Larger animals provide draught power in the fields, allowing greater areas to be
cultivated. And their waste supplies high-quality crop fertilizer for improved
yields.
McDermott's calling for more research on treatment and prevention for common
livestock ailments, because he believes protecting the animal's health will
directly ensure the family's financial security. He's also helping establish
collaborations with crop research centres to select dual-purpose crops that will
feed both humans and animals, to best utilize the available land.
Over the next 20 years, meat and milk demand will stagnate in developed
countries, but double in developing countries. Analysts are calling this
"The Livestock Revolution" and ILRI is developing strategies that will
allow underprivileged people to benefit from it. In many circumstances, poor
smallholders can compete with larger farmers if appropriate policies and
technologies are adopted, says McDermott. He believes the key is to include
broader considerations such as social equity and environment in government's
policy and decision making.
Clare Illingworth writes for the research department at the University of Guelph.
North
Carolina scientists divided over impact of hog waste on environment
December 17, 2003
Knight-Ridder Tribune
Greg Barnes, The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.
Rick Dove, who works for the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance, tries,
according to this story, to collect aerial documentation of violations of
waste-disposal regulations.
Dove was cited as estimating that he logged 80 hours of flight time over hog
country between February and June. Along the way, he took hundreds of pictures
and digital videos. He also made computer-generated maps to document the exact
locations of suspected polluters.
The story says that many of the pictures appear to show farmers spraying waste
directly into ditches that run off their farms. They appear to show waste
illegally pooling in fields. More than one appears to show waste being piped
directly intoditches or wetlands.
Some of the farms that Dove flew over belonged to Smithfield Foods, which owns
275 in the state. Some belonged to farmers raising pigs under contract to
Smithfield -- another 1,200 of them. The rest were likely to ship hogs to
Smithfield's slaughterhouse in Bladen County.
The story says that Smithfield didn't start hog farming in North Carolina, but
the number of hogs quadrupled shortly after the company announced it would open
the world's largest slaughtering plant in 1990.
And while pork industry officials and farmers say the plant has contributed to
the economic survival of a whole region, detractors say the slaughterhouse has
magnified the actual and potential environmental problems created by 9.6 million
hogs.
The Division of Water Quality's Fayetteville office is supposed to have three
inspectors to oversee 751 livestock farms in its 11-county region. State
regulations require the division to inspect the farms once a year.
As of Sept. 30, the Fayetteville office -- at times operating with just one
inspector -- had inspected 254 of the 751 farms, or slightly more than a third.
That was far better than the Wilmington office, which had inspected only 52 of
679 farms. Statewide, fewer than half of all permitted farms had been inspected.
Michelle Nowlin, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, was
quoted as saying, "The agricultural industry is treated with kid gloves. I
think they are coddled. I think ... a lot of the very serious problems that they
create tend to go ignored."
Hog industry officials and farmers were cited as countering that they are
operating farms in a manner that has been approved and heavily regulated by the
state and that they are being unfairly singled out.
Dennis Treacy, Smithfield's vice president of environmental, community and
government affairs, was cited as saying the hog industry has essentially been
demonized because hogs are seen as dirty animals and the waste they produce
stinks. The truth, he and others contend, is that the content of that waste is
not essentially different from the fertilizers row crop farmers use on their
fields.
Industry officials point to the Black River, which runs through Sampson County
-- the heart of hog country. The state says the river is an Outstanding Resource
Water, a designation given to rivers with superior water quality.
People involved with the hog industry also point to scientific studies that
indicate the industry is not damaging the environment. Farmers and others in the
industry say that 99 percent of farms complied with environmental regulations
last year, according to Smithfield officials.
Rann Carpenter, director of the N.C. Pork Council, was quoted as saying,
"We have tried very hard to educate a wide variety of people that we are
serious about this, that we are operating under standards that were established
for us. The vast, vast majority of our people are operating their systems in
compliance with the standards and permits that were adopted for us."
Cow
ambles to the sequencing house
December 19, 2003
Science Volume 302, Number 5653, p. 2050.
Jennifer Couzin
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), normally loath to back big-budget
genetics projects, is offering $11 million to help sequence the cow genome. The
funding, announced last week, comes after months of lobbying from bovine
enthusiasts and ensures that the project, estimated to cost at least $50
million, will go forward. Four countries--the United States, Canada, New
Zealand, and Australia--have contributed a total of $53 million. Proponents
claim that the cow genome will help elucidate human diseases and identify gene
variants important for agriculture, such as those that promote milk production.
Bovine supporters have been eyeing USDA's coffers since last summer, when the
last of the other contributions were announced. The National Human Genome
Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, forked over $25 million; the state of
Texas, $10 million; the Canadian government, $5 million; and the governments of
Australia and New Zealand, $1 million each. Two-thirds of New Zealand's
contribution came from the cattle industry.
Until now, USDA had balked at a big donation: "There's never been enough
money in the USDA budget to support large-scale sequencing," says Harris
Lewin, director of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 2003, USDA's extramural research program totaled
a mere $166 million out of its $74 billion budget. The agency has helped fund
smaller sequences, such as the honeybee's 200 million base pairs. Researchers
credit Joseph Jen, the USDA undersecretary for research, education, and
economics, with helping convince the agency to contribute to the roughly
3-billion-base-pair bovine sequence.
A Montana Hereford has been anointed the lucky cow. The project will begin at
Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, in the next few months and should
be completed within 3 to 4 years.
Experimental
vaccine stops shipping fever in feeder calves
December 2003
Healthy Animals Newsletter, Issue 16
http://www.usda.gov/whatsnew.htm
The complete document can be viewed at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/np/ha/han16.htm
An ARS-developed experimental vaccine should be very effective in cattle against
shipping fever, the leading cause of illness and death in U.S. feedlots.
The experimental vaccine was created by deleting a large piece of a specific
gene from bacteria that cause shipping fever. When this gene segment is removed,
the bacterium no longer causes pneumonia in cattle, but does elicit immunity.
Veterinarian Robert E. Briggs and microbiologist Fred M. Tatum at the National
Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, created the live vaccine without foreign
DNA.
Pork
Board names new top scientist
December 19, 2003
Meatingplace.com
Daniel Yovich
http://www.meatingplace.com/DailyNews/init.asp?clickthrough=true&ID=11619
Veterinarian Paul Sundberg has been named vice president of science and
technology for the Pork Board, replacing veterinarian Beth Lautner, who will
become director of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in January.
Sundberg had been the assistant vice president of veterinary issues at the Pork
Board. He has overseen technical input for Pork Checkoff-funded programs
including the Pork Quality Assurance program and the Swine Welfare Assurance
Program. Sundberg also has worked on pork-industry issues, including
antimicrobial resistance and judicious use of animal health products;
swine-health regulations; food safety and pork production.
“I view this announcement with mixed emotions,” said Steven Murphy, CEO of
the National Pork Board. “We are fortunate to have someone with Paul
Sundberg’s knowledge, passion and skills in place to continue to oversee the
vital scientific work being conducted for pork producers with their Checkoff
investment. And it’s a great compliment to our industry and to our staff that
Dr. Beth Lautner has been selected to head the Plum Island facility, whose
research and diagnostic work is critical to this country’s food safety. But
her energy and devotion to serving the needs of pork producers will be sorely
missed.”
The Plum Island Animal Disease Center, on an island off the coast of New York,
is part of the science and technology division of the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security. It is the only place in the United States where research and
diagnostic work is done to help prevent the introduction of foreign animal
diseases such as foot and mouth disease or classical swine fever.
“RabNet”
version 2 and the new WHO rabies web site are now online
December 12, 2003
Weekly Epidemiological Record, Vol 78, No 50, pp 425-432
http://www.who.int/entity/wer/2003/en/wer7850.pdf
Since 1959, WHO has collected data on human and animal rabies from its Member
States, using a questionnaire to produce the World Rabies Survey (WRS) annually
or biennially. In the late 1990s, a web-based electronic version of the
questionnaire, accessible through RabNet, was added to the paper questionnaire
sent by mail. During the past two years, rabies data collection and processing
online have improved. WHO is therefore pleased to announce the release of
“Rab-Net2” at http://www.who.int/rabnet. RabNet2 retains the same concept as
the former version but uses a new electronic platform, the WHO Global Atlas of
Infectious Diseases. Through the Global Atlas, RabNet2 provides new features,
including the possibility of creating interactive global or country rabies maps.
Soon, it will be possible to generate rabies maps at district and even community
level. RabNet2 also has a library of ready-made maps and rabies-related
documents and provides details on the WHO network of collaborating centres on
rabies.
Using RabNet2, rabies data can be linked to a broad range of country-specific
indicators (population, education, health services) to provide a more
comprehensive picture of the rabies situation in various geographical areas;
country data can be accessed for consultation; data can be punched in online
from remote. Once validated, data are automatically transferred to RabNet2 for
immediate access and processing. The main rabies indicators were reviewed and
the number of questions was reduced. Only designated medical and veterinary
officers will have access to the online questionnaire using apassword supplied
by WHO. For further information, please contact RabNet2@who.int.
A new WHO rabies web site (http://www.who.int/rabies) was launched at the
beginning of December 2003. It covers all general information on this neglected
disease and details WHO strategies for reducing the number of cases and
preventing human rabies. A large part of the web site is dedicated to human
rabies, with information on symptoms and pre- and post-exposure treatment;
another section, on animal rabies, covers control of wildlife and dog rabies,
including oral immunization; last section covers human and animal vaccine types
and requirements. A resource page provides access to all relevant WHO
publications on rabies, to essential maps and to RabNet2. A generic e-mail
address for all questions has been established: rabies@who.int n
13
an unlucky number for Aussie cattle
December 19, 2003
Meatingplace.com
Daniel Yovich
http://www.meatingplace.com/DailyNews/init.asp?clickthrough=true&ID=11619
Australian rancher David Potter says a bolt of lightning is responsible for the
death of 13 cattle.
Potter said he believed the lightning hit a tree that the cows sought shelter
under and they were killed in a “chain reaction.”
“There was two big claps of thunder and when I went to get the cows, there
were 13 of them dead under the tree,” Potter said. “You could see where the
lightning had hit the tree. It’s just one of them things. We’ve had storms
through here before with lightning and never had anything like that happen
before. I’ve never heard of anything like this. It’s ... just
unlucky—unlucky 13.”
Potter, said the dead cattle, all under six years old, were uninsured, and that
they would cost up to $1000 each to replace.
Veterinary
inspections
December 18, 2003
The European Commission
http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/index_en.html
The complete document of the following can be viewed at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/fs/inspections/vi/reports/portugal/vi_rep_port_9039-2003_en.pdf
Final report of a mission carried out in Portugal from 2 to 6 June 2003
concerning animal welfare during transport and at the time of slaughter
(9039/2003)
Implantation
or injectable dosage form new animal drugs; flunixin meglumine solution
December 19, 2003
[Federal Register: (Volume 68, Number 244)]
[Page 70701]
[DOCID:fr19de03-3]
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
AGENCY: Food and Drug Administration, HHS.
ACTION: Final rule.
SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is amending the animal drug
regulations to reflect approval of an abbreviated new animal drug application (ANADA)
filed by Norbrook Laboratories, Ltd. The ANADA provides for the veterinary
prescription use of flunixin meglumine injectable solution for the control of
inflammation in horses, beef cattle, and nonlactating dairy cattle.
DATES: This rule is effective December 19, 2003. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
CONTACT: Lonnie W. Luther, Center for Veterinary Medicine (HFV 104), Food and
Drug Administration, 7519 Standish Pl., Rockville, MD 20855, 301-827-8549,
e-mail:
lluther@cvm.fda.gov.
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