Information Sheet Meat, Dairy and Aquaculture Information Sheets
'Animal Health News' April 2003
An occasional newsletter of CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory
ANIMAL HEALTH NEWS ... INSIDE
Regional network on FMD Heightened biosecurity against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in South-East Asia is the goal of a new project involving 15 countries from Australia to Vietnam.
From the Director The most effective way to protect Australia from livestock diseases that impact on trade, such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), is to help eradicate these diseases completely from the world.
Switch to Newcastle virus found CSIRO scientists have discovered experimental evidence of a mechanism to explain recent outbreaks of Newcastle disease in Australian poultry.
New poultry and biosecurity research CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) is a major partner in two new Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) that will start in July 2003.
Information links labs A new laboratory information system for CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) will boost Australia's capability to respond to an emergency animal disease threat.
Duck virus vaccine A cheap and effective vaccine against duck virus enteritis will benefit Vietnamese villagers and duck farmers.
Medal win for antibiotic alternative A new generation treatment to protect chickens against infection could replace the use of antibiotics in the poultry industry.
Whirling disease diagnosis CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) is upgrading its diagnostic capability for an exotic parasite of salmon and trout.
Screening for poultry disease Routine diagnostic testing is helping to exclude foreign poultry diseases.
Safe dairy products Maintaining the excellent safety reputation of dairy foods is the aim of a new collaborative research project.
International collaborations help Australia's chickens CSIRO Livestock Industries researchers are working with colleagues in the United States and France to reduce the impact of Marek's disease, a serious disease of poultry.
Bath helps frogs fight back A special bath to detect frogs infected with the killer chytrid fungus has been concocted.
Piecing together the pilchard puzzle Researchers have progressed development of diagnostic tools for the pilchard herpesvirus.
Vaccines for salmon Researchers are working to develop a vaccine against amoebic gill disease.
Training the next generation A strong training program at CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) is attracting students from Australia and overseas.
Face of AAHL A fascination with the intricate workings of viruses, and a passion for problem solving, are at the heart of the career of principal research scientist Dr Barbara Coupar.
Contacts This newsletter is also available for download in PDF format (click on the "PDF" image to open the document) [PDF file, 180 Kb].
Please contact us if you would like to receive a hard copy of this newsletter or would like email notification when the next edition of this newsletter is available online.
Heightened biosecurity against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in South-East Asia is the goal of a new project involving 15 countries from Australia to Vietnam.
Enhanced intelligence on the spread of the dreaded livestock disease will be achieved through developing more affordable diagnostic tests and strengthening links between national laboratories, a new regional reference laboratory in Thailand, and the world reference laboratory in the UK.
The project aims to control and ultimately eradicate the disease in the region.
Delegates from the participating countries met at CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), in Geelong, in late February, to kick off the project.
Dr John Crowther of the Joint Food and Agricultural Organisation/International Atomic Energy Agency - which is funding the project - says the components of diagnostic tests for FMD are too expensive to be extensively used by many countries in the region.
"The project aims to set up systems to supply cheaper diagnostic reagents to other countries in the region.
"This will help build greater levels of knowledge on the location and spread of all strains of the disease," he says.
AAHL will take a lead role in the project, as the laboratory was unanimously elected to coordinate the project and supply diagnostic reagents. AAHL will produce the reagents and supply them to the regional reference laboratory for FMD in Thailand, where they will be distributed to the participating countries in the region. The first delivery is expected to be made in October 2003.
AAHL Director Dr Martyn Jeggo says Australia stands to benefit from its involvement in the project as improved knowledge on the FMD threat should help to target quarantine resources to keep the disease out.
"As part of the project, we will assist laboratories in other countries to establish quality controls and a regional proficiency testing program," Dr Jeggo says.
FMD is a highly contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals like pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and deer.
The disease spreads rapidly via contact between animals, and is carried by people, transport vehicles, or on the wind.
It has not occurred in Australia since 1872.
The other participating countries are Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
The following organisations were also represented at the meeting: Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer of Australia, Office International des Epizooties (OIE - World Animal Health Organisation), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
For more information contact Dr Jeggo, phone +61 3 5227 5160 or email [email protected]
The most effective way to protect Australia from livestock diseases that impact on trade, such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), is to help eradicate these diseases completely from the world. While this may sound like an audacious goal, it will be possible, with the help of effective and affordable vaccines and diagnostic tests.
Consider the case of rinderpest. The current Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) has had considerable success in removing this cattle disease globally. The disease now appears to exist in just two countries, and the prospect of eradicating it completely is high. The availability of a vaccine that protects against the causative virus and the related diagnostics for effectively determining the success of vaccination campaigns, have been critical to the project. Mass vaccination, not mass slaughter, was at the heart of the GREP, with a switch to targeted vaccination programs and intensive field surveillance once the level of disease in a region was reduced through vaccination.
For other transboundary animal diseases (TADs), neither an effective vaccine nor related diagnostics exist. For some diseases such as African Swine Fever no vaccines even exists. In other cases such as FMD and contagious bovine pleuropneumonia the vaccines are either ineffective or logistically difficult to use. There has been no concerted research effort to develop new generation vaccines for TADs, with the exception of rinderpest. While viable recombinant vaccines were developed, these were never used the field, as the current vaccine (Kabete O strain) was adequate for the eradication campaign. Notwithstanding this, an effective vaccine was a key enabling technology for the only successful eradication of a TAD in the developing world.
The recent outbreaks of FMD in Europe have highlighted not only the enormous cost of a slaughter policy to control the disease, but a rejection of this approach by the public. Holland successfully used FMD vaccination to contain and limit the outbreak and recent reports increasingly point to the use of vaccination as a possible strategy in managing future outbreaks. As long as the disease is endemic in some countries, the threat remains of outbreaks in the developed world. Unfortunately control and elimination in most of endemic areas is impossible, due in part to an inability to affordably apply current vaccines for control. What is needed is a new generation of FMD vaccines that give broad cover against a number of serotypes, provide lasting immunity, are heat stable and relatively affordable, and for which immune response in animals could be easily distinguished from that of field infections. Such vaccines would have real impact.
CSIRO Livestock Industries is now engaged with partners in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada to develop a proposal to undertake research to develop a new generation of FMD vaccines and associated diagnostics assays. Critical to these partnerships are the skills and research opportunities offered by CSIRO Livestock Industries, via both the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) and the new Queensland Bioscience Precinct in Brisbane.
With global partnerships, and the use of enabling science such as immunology, genomics and proteomics, we will one day be able to control and hopefully eradicate the range of diseases that affect our livestock.
CSIRO scientists have discovered experimental evidence of a mechanism to explain recent outbreaks of Newcastle disease in Australian poultry.
Dr Allan Gould from CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) says experiments show that a mild strain of the Newcastle disease virus can switch to a more serious form if birds' immune systems are compromised when the infection is taking hold.
"This is the first time that this transformation in Newcastle disease virus has been replicated in an experiment," Dr Gould says.
"Any virus strain is actually made of thousands of different individual virus particles that differ slightly at a genetic level.
"AAHL's results indicate that if the bird's immune system is not functioning well, the virulent virus type that exists at very low levels within the virus population is able to multiply to levels that eventually dominate the infection process," he says.
"The mild virus strain infects only the respiratory and digestive systems of the chickens, but a much more serious disease occurs if infection spreads to the central nervous system."
Dr Gould says the implication for the Australian chicken industry is that anything producers can do to improve the general health of their birds will help to lower the risk of further outbreaks of the disease.
Outbreaks caused by virulent strains of Newcastle disease occurred in 2002 in New South Wales and Victoria, and in New South Wales in 1998, 1999, and 2000.
Until these outbreaks, the Australian poultry industry had been free from virulent Newcastle disease, although authorities were aware of the presence of mild strains of the virus.
AAHL is now undertaking research to better understand the biological mechanism for the switch from mild to virulent, and to establish if vaccination can block transmission of the virus strains.
Research is being conducted into developing a new method of genetically analysing virus sequences, which will allow diagnosis of the virulent Newcastle disease virus to be made within hours, rather than the current time of two days or more.
Dr Gould says further research is required to understand the effects of concurrent infections with other viruses on Newcastle disease infection in poultry, and to identify the source of the mild virus from which the virulent strains are arising.
AAHL's work in the area was conducted with the financial assistance of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC). The final report on the research will be available shortly from RIRDC. NSW Agriculture's Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute and the Victorian Department of Primary Industry's Victorian Institute of Animal Science supplied the viral strains used in the studies.
Newcastle disease virus causes disease in birds only and not in humans, and hence does not pose a risk to consumers of poultry products.
For information contact Dr Gould on +61 3 5227 5119 or email [email protected]
CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) is a major partner in two new Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) that will start in July 2003, as recently announced by the Federal Government.
The Australian Biosecurity CRC will counter the threat of emerging infectious disease to Australia, by developing new technology and knowledge for disease detection and surveillance. The CRC will be funded $17.5 million over seven years.
The Poultry CRC aims to enhance the competitiveness of the Australian egg and chicken meat industries by delivering cost-effective and socially responsible production methods for safe, quality poultry products. It will be funded $23 million over seven years.
Australian Biosecurity
Hand-held devices to quickly diagnose diseases and geographic information systems for predicting disease outbreaks are amongst the technologies that will be developed by the Australian Biosecurity CRC.
The spread of infectious disease into Australia, through the movement of people and animals, or even bioterrorism, is a real risk, says CRC interim CEO, Professor John Mackenzie.
"We will address this risk by developing tools and systems for rapid disease detection and surveillance, and by expanding knowledge of the potential for disease threats to establish and spread within Australia," he says.
Interim research manager, AAHL's Dr Bryan Eaton, says disease agents that will be targeted include a mosquito-borne brain disease of people, Japanese encephalitis, the devastating livestock disease, foot-and-mouth, and two recently discovered viruses that can kill animals and people, Hendra virus and Nipah virus. The early warning technologies could also be adapted for potential biowarfare agents.
The CRC will run an education program, producing research graduates with high-level experience in virology, parasitology and applied epidemiology, and training postgraduate students and animal and public health professionals.
Core participants in the Australian Biosecurity CRC are the University of Queensland, Curtin University of Technology, Commonwealth Departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia (AFFA), and Health and Ageing (DHA), Animal Health Australia, Australian Pork Ltd, and CSIRO Livestock Industries' AAHL.
The Australian Biosecurity CRC also has a number of international links.
Poultry
Interim CEO of the Poultry CRC, Dr Mingan Choct, says the CRC aims to build a poultry industry with enhanced bird health, welfare standards and environmental management, producing high quality 'clean and green' products.
The core partners in the Poultry CRC include the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, Australian Egg Corporation, University of Melbourne, Bioproperties, and University of New England.
CSIRO Livestock Industries' AAHL will be a major participant in the CRC.
Dr John Lowenthal of AAHL says sustainable production of chicken meat without reliance on antibiotics is a key goal, and AAHL will contribute to this by applying new technologies such as genomics and RNA interference.
About CRCs
CRCs bring together researchers from universities, CSIRO and other government laboratories, and private industry or public sector agencies, in long-term collaborative arrangements which support research and development and education activities that achieve real outcomes of national economic, social and environmental significance.
For information about the Australian Biosecurity CRC contact Professor Mackenzie on +61 7 3365 4648 or email [email protected], or Dr Eaton on +61 3 5227 5116 or email [email protected]
For information about the Poultry CRC contact Dr Choct on +61 2 6773 5121 or email [email protected], or contact Dr Lowenthal on +61 3 5227 5759 or email [email protected]
A new laboratory information system for CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) will boost Australia's capability to respond to an emergency animal disease threat such as foot-and-mouth disease.
With funding from Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australia (AFFA), AAHL is now developing a system which will allow veterinarians to input sample details into AAHL's information system at the same time the samples are being collected in the field.
AAHL's Information Technology manager Mr Colin Northwood explains that the system will interact with new robotic diagnostic equipment that will be installed this year, allowing samples and results to be easily tracked and reported.
"While the information system will be useful for disease exclusions, surveillance, and quarantine testing, it is really designed to improve our throughput and reporting during a major disease outbreak, when volumes of up to five thousand samples could be handled during an eight-hour shift," he says.
The information system will enable sample submissions, specify testing requirements and allocate resources to a test, facilitate entry of test results and the production of interim and final reports. At all times, the progress of individual samples through the testing process will be able to be precisely pinpointed.
A similar laboratory information system was used during the UK's FMD outbreak in 2001.
Simulation exercises to test the new information systems are planned for late this year.
For information contact Mr Northwood on +61 3 5227 5111 or email [email protected]
A cheap and effective vaccine against duck virus enteritis will benefit Vietnamese villagers and duck farmers, thanks to a successful project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and AusAID.
Vietnam's National Veterinary Company/Veterinary Research Centre (NAVETCO) developed the vaccine with advice from the University of Queensland. CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) developed a range of new diagnostic tests for the virus and transferred the technology to NAVETCO, where the tests were used to enable more accurate diagnosis of the disease and to support extensive field tests of the vaccine.
ACIAR's Dr John Copland says duck virus enteritis, also known as duck plague, occurs widely in South-East Asia, home to a quarter of the world's farmed ducks. It may kill up to 90 per cent of ducks in affected flocks.
AAHL's Dr Peter Daniels says, "The new vaccine will allow both commercial and poorer farmers a cheap means of protecting their investment. Subsistence farmers will frequently buy up to 1,000 ducks, at about five Australian dollars each, and rear these in the Vietnamese equivalent of the 'long paddock', by itinerant grazing along the canals and paddy fields until ready for market."
"Vietnamese scientist also gained valuable skills in diagnosis and design of field trials of vaccines, through training by the University of Queensland and CSIRO staff," he says.
The new duck virus enteritis tests allow for antibody and virus detection, along with immunohistochemistry and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests to detect virus in sick and dead ducks.
For information, contact Dr Daniels on +61 3 5227 5272 or email [email protected]
A new generation treatment to protect chickens against infection could replace the use of antibiotics in the poultry industry, which is good news for consumers concerned about their use.
A CSIRO Livestock Industries' research team based at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) was last December awarded a CSIRO medal for their research into the delivery of antibiotic alternatives - natural proteins called cytokines - into chickens.
CSIRO researcher, Dr John Lowenthal, says the use of antibiotics in animal industries has raised concerns about the potential spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
"A number of European countries have reacted by restricting the use of antibiotics in food production animals," he says. "There is, therefore, a strong international push to develop new, environmentally-friendly methods to control disease in animals."
In 1990, CSIRO began an ambitious research program to find alternatives to antibiotics for the poultry industry. The focus was on using cytokines to enhance disease resistance. A significant advantage with this approach is the ability of the cytokines to provide protection against a range of infectious diseases.
"Cytokines are proteins that are produced by the body. Their job is to improve the immune response during infection and help combat disease. As such, they are excellent naturally-occurring therapeutics," Dr Lowenthal says.
"We showed that when chickens were treated with cytokines their health improved and as a consequence they gained weight more quickly. The problem was identifying how we could safely and effectively deliver this treatment to the 400 million chickens grown commercially each year in Australia."
According to CSIRO researcher, Dr Mike Johnson, the solution involved using gene technology to modify viruses called adenoviruses to carry the cytokines into chickens.
"The adenoviruses we are using are similar to vaccine strains commonly used in the poultry industry. Using these adenoviruses is ideal in terms of maintaining biosafety standards because they are harmless to the animal and only infect one species," Dr Johnson says. "For example, a chicken adenovirus will infect only chickens, but not humans or other animals."
Another safety factor is that the adenovirus and cytokines remain in the chicken for only a few days, while the protective effect lasts much longer. As a result, fully-grown chickens are completely free of the treatment. A big plus is the way treatments can be delivered to animals. Needles are no longer necessary -instead treatments can be mixed in with food or water or simply sprayed on.
Numerous animal trials, performed at CSIRO's secure animal facilities, showed that treating chickens with an adenovirus carrying a cytokine - chicken gamma interferon - led to improvements in growth performance.
An Australian research and development company, VectoGen Limited, a subsidiary of the Australian animal health company, Imugene Limited, recently acquired exclusive worldwide licenses from CSIRO to this new technology.
Dr Jeff Fairbrother, Executive Director of the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, says the Australian poultry industry keenly awaits the release of this novel technology.
All CSIRO research involving gene technology is rigorously safety tested before any products are released, following the guidelines set out by the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR).
Along with Dr Johnson and Dr Lowenthal, the winners of the CSIRO medal for the chicken adenovirus/cytokine research were Dr Andrew Bean, Dr Matthew Digby, Dr Kevin Fahey, Dr Adrian Hodgson, Mrs Terri O'Neil, Ms Cate Pooley, Dr David Strom and Dr Jennifer York.
IMU Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
