Livestock diseases present a growing threat to the food security.
Seed Daily
http://www.seeddaily.com/
by Staff Writers
New Delhi, India (SPX) Feb 14, 2011
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 at the International Conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health.
“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, organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 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.
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The call for better and more effective animal disease (zoonotic) surveillance has been called for for a number of years now and especially since the emergence of A/H1N1 so-called Swine flu which emerged out of Mexico in April of 2009. It is now know that this strain of influenza virus was circulating through pig production facilities globally for an number of years prior to its emergence in a human population and is now the dominant flu strain being seen in the U.S. this year. Better monitoring of zoonotic diseases would greatly enhance our abilities to predict and counter future occurrences of these diseases not only in animal populations both wild and domestic but human populations as well. Editor.
