Upcoming COCA Call: Diseases of Food Animals Threaten Global Food Security

1 person in 8 is Undernourished Photo Credit – FAO

 

 

# 10,067

With tens of millions of birds in the United States destroyed (or soon to be) due to our worst HPAI outbreak in history, several recently introduced porcine diseases (see mBio: A Novel Pathogenic Mammalian Orthoreovirus In Diarrheic American Pigs) killing piglets, and a long list of other exotic or emerging epizootic diseases around the globe, concerns over the safety and viability of the world’s food supply are mounting.

 

Although the United States can absorb the kind of poultry loses we’ve taken these past few months, many resource limited regions have been severely tested by outbreaks of avian flu, FMD, and other food animal diseases.

 

Next week the CDC will sponsor a COCA Call that delves into the challenges of controlling these outbreaks, and why they seem to be occurring with more frequency.

 

While primarily of interest to healthcare providers, COCA (Clinician Outreach Communication Activity) calls are designed to ensure that practitioners have up-to-date information for their practices.  The audio from these calls are posted several days after they are held.  You can access COCA calls going back to 2012 at this link.

 

First the link to next week’s presentation, after which I’ll have a bit more:

 

Emerging and Exotic Diseases of Food Animals Threaten Global Food Security

 

= Free Continuing Education

Date:Thursday, May 28, 2015

Time:2:00 - 3:00 pm (Eastern Time)

Join by Phone:

• 800-369-2062 (U.S. Callers)
• 517-308-9046 (International Callers)

Passcode:1302224

Join by Webinar:https://www.mymeetings.com/nc/join.php?i=PW3643037&p=1302224&t=c

Presenter(s)

James A. Roth, DVM, PhD, Diplomate ACVM
Clarence Hartley Covault Distinguished Professor
Director, Center for Food Security and Public Health
Executive Director, Institute for International Cooperation in Animal Biologics
College of Veterinary Medicine
Iowa State University

Overview

New diseases of food animals are emerging at an increasing rate and are spreading regionally and globally. Many of the same factors leading to emergence of human diseases are responsible for the emergence of animal diseases, and many of the animal diseases are zoonotic. The challenges of controlling emerging food animal diseases are very different in intensive animal agriculture and small holder animal production and depend upon the veterinary and public health infrastructure available. During the COCA call, participants will learn about reasons for the increasing rate of emergence of food animal diseases, some specific examples, challenges for their control, and implications for public health and food security.

Objectives

At the conclusion of the session, the participant will be able to accomplish the following:

• Review recent examples of emerging diseases of food animals
• Discuss reasons for emergence and dissemination of diseases of food animals
• Describe challenges for control of zoonotic and non-zoonotic food animal diseases
• Suggest infrastructure changes needed to improve prevention and control of food animal diseases

Call Format

• Audio conference call on 5/28/15: 2:00 - 3:00 PM
• Web-on-demand training after 3:00 PM on 5/28/15
• Materials: PowerPoint slide set

 

 

Previously we’ve explored some of the choices made by governments around the world to protect their animal food sources – not all of which have worked out as well as they might have hoped.

 

Two years ago in Food Insecurity, Economics, And The Control Of H7N9, we looked at some country’s decision to go with poultry vaccination instead of culling to control avian flu - despite OIE warnings that vaccination of poultry cannot be considered a long-term solution (see Does OIE recommend vaccination of animals to control the disease?).

 

Since then we’ve seen a number of studies suggesting that the proliferation of new avian flu viruses over the past couple of years may have arisen from the continued use of outmoded or ineffectual vaccines (see The HPAI Poultry Vaccine Dilemma).

As you might guess, this is a complex problem with answers are neither easy or clear cut.  For more on global food insecurity, you may wish to visit the FAO’s most recent report:

 

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 presents updated estimates of undernourishment and progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets. A stock-taking of where we stand on reducing hunger and malnutrition shows that progress in hunger reduction at the global level and in many countries has continued but that substantial additional effort is needed in others.

Sustained political commitment at the highest level is a prerequisite for hunger eradication. It entails placing food security and nutrition at the top of the political agenda and creating an enabling environment for improving food security and nutrition. This year’s report examines the diverse experiences of seven countries, with a specific focus on the enabling environment for food security and nutrition that reflects commitment and capacities across four dimensions: policies, programmes and legal frameworks; mobilization of human and financial resources; coordination mechanisms and partnerships; and evidence-based decision-making.

Morens and Taubenberger: A New Look At The Panzootic Of 1872

 

 

 

# 4995

 

 

One of the most fascinating events in relatively modern infectious disease history occurred in the fall of 1872, when a massive wave of (presumably) equine influenza swept across North American, infecting much of the horse population from Canada to Mexico – and killing up to 10%.

 

You’ll find an excellent history of this outbreak from Horsetalk.co.nz.

 

How equine flu brought the US to a standstill

A Boston fire wagon without its horses.

September 26, 2007

 

Australia's equine flu outbreak may have crippled the racing industry, but an 1872 outbreak in North America brought the entire US economy to a virtual standstill.

(Continue . . .)

 

 

This was at a time in history when horses were the primary means of transportation, and the economic effects of this months long epizootic were substantial, and some have suggested it contributed to the economic Panic of 1873 the following year.

 

Ian York author of the Mystery Rays blog wrote about this incident back in December of 2009 in a blog called Influenza before 1918, part II: 1872.  A brief excerpt:

 

Without horses, business slammed to a halt; the mail didn’t run, groceries didn’t reach the cities, crops weren’t harvested or transported.  After a few weeks, most of the horses recovered and business followed, but the epizootic swept across the country (intensely tracked by the newspapers of the day, warning each city in turn that it was going to be attacked), finally fizzling out the following summer in British Columbia.

 

Little remembered today, this was a huge story in 1972.  The assumption has been that this was sparked by some drift or shift in an already existing equine influenza.

 

But David Morens and Jeffrey K. Taubenberger of the NIH bring us tantalizing details of a concurrent outbreak of poultry deaths across the country, and that raises some interesting questions.

 

Without the ability to analyze and identify pathogens from that era, researchers are understandably hampered in their understanding of what exactly what transpired 140 years ago.  

 

But Taubenberger and Morens discuss a plausible scenario where a highly pathogenic avian virus may have jumped species and infected horses, pigs, deer, and in some cases, even humans.

 

My thanks to mixin on FluTrackers for posting this link.

 

Morens and Taubenberger (2010) An avian outbreak associated with panzootic equine influenza in 1872: an early example of highly pathogenic avian influenza? Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 4(6), 373–377.

Abstract

Background An explosive fatal epizootic in poultry, prairie chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese, occurred over much of the populated United States between 15 November and 15 December 1872. To our knowledge the scientific literature contains no mention of the nationwide 1872 poultry outbreak.

Objective To understand avian influenza in a historical context.

Results The epizootic progressed in temporal-geographic association with a well-reported panzootic of equine influenza that had begun in Canada during the last few days of September 1872. The 1872 avian epizootic was universally attributed at the time to equine influenza, a disease then of unknown etiology but widely believed to be caused by the same transmissible respiratory agent that caused human influenza.

Conclusions Another microbial agent could have caused the avian outbreak; however, its strong temporal and geographic association with the equine panzootic, and its clinical and epidemiologic features, are most consistent with highly pathogenic avian influenza. The avian epizootic could thus have been an early instance of highly pathogenic avian influenza.

 

 

Jeffrey  K. Taubenberger and David Morens are, of course,  familiar names to followers of influenza and virology.

 

Both are researchers at NIAID. Taubenberger, quite famously, was the first to sequence the the genome of the 1918 Spanish Flu virus while David Morens is a prominent medical historian and professor.

 

Both are extensively published, and have collaborated often in the past.

 

As this report is too good to try to summarize, I’ll simply suggest you follow this link and read it in its entirety.