Animal Disease Events Research Articles

Small animal disease surveillance 2020/21: SARS-CoV-2, syndromic surveillance and an outbreak of acute vomiting in UK dogs.

Small animal disease surveillance 2020/21: SARS-CoV-2, syndromic surveillance and an outbreak of acute vomiting in UK dogs.

When poultry take a sick leave: Response costs for the 2014–2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza epidemic in the USA

The 2014–2015 H5N2/H5N8 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) epidemic required $879 million dollars in public expenditures to eradicate the disease from poultry production, making it the most costly animal health incident in US history. Cost and resource availability are important considerations when determining optimal response plans. However, limited information was available, historically, on which to base the evaluation of response plans for large-scale HPAI events on farms in the US and across the world. Response cost data collected during the 2014–2015 HPAI outbreak by the United States Department of Agriculture – Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and associated response information such as responder type and activity were examined as a preliminary effort to enhance understanding of the cost associated with alternative response plans under real resource and labor constraints. Results indicated that differences did exist by state and poultry facility type that affected both total and incremental cost, indicating the importance of local and state policies and resources on farm level eradication cost. On-farm response activities associated with depopulation and disposal resulted in costs that were most sensitive to bird inventory size. Exploring the responder characteristics revealed that contractors hired directly by the federal government or sub-contractors that are hired by a producer, while most expensive in absolute terms, contributed the lowest incremental increase in cost for each additional bird housed on a farm when depopulating. Identifying and quantifying response activity costs for poultry assists planning efforts for local, state and federal response agencies and private firms that are faced with high consequence avian health threats. The data, while still limited in certain facets, facilitate impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses in future planning. This study illustrates the importance of collecting livestock disease outbreak cost data ex post for observing cost relationships during large-scale animal disease events in countries with commercial poultry production.

Identifying associations between epidemiological entities in news data for animal disease surveillance

Event-based surveillance systems are at the crossroads of human and animal (and plant and ecosystem) health, epidemiology, statistics, and informatics. Thus, their deployment faces many challenges specific to each domain and their intersections, such as relations among automation, artificial intelligence, and expertise. In this context, our work pertins to the extraction of epidemiological events in textual data (i.e. news) by unsupervised methods. We define the event extraction task as detecting pairs of epidemiological entities (e.g. a disease name and location). The quality of the ranked lists of pairs was evaluated using specific ranking evaluation metrics. We used a publicly available annotated corpus of 438 documents (i.e. news articles) related to animal disease events. The statistical approach was able to detect event-related pairs of epidemiological features with a good trade-off between precision and recall. Our results showed that using a window of words outperformed document-based and sentence-based approaches, while reducing the probability of detecting false pairs. Our results indicated that Mutual Information was less adapted than the Dice coefficient for ranking pairs of features in the event extraction framework. We believe that Mutual Information would be more relevant for rare pair detection (i.e. weak signals), but requires higher manual curation to avoid false positive extraction pairs. Moreover, generalising the country-level spatial features enabled better discrimination (i.e. ranking) of relevant disease-location pairs for event extraction.

International Trade Implications of Highly Pathogenic Poultry Disease Events

Animal disease events can lead to international trade restrictions which can vary in duration, products included, and geographical extent. Accounting for multilateral resistance between trading partners, a general gravity model of trade is estimated with a Hausman-Taylor and a Hausman-Taylor seemingly unrelated estimator to evaluate the trade quantity impact by commodity resulting from highly pathogenic poultry disease events in 24 exporting markets. Commodity specific results show that quantity traded and products demanded during a disease event differ by commodities. Understanding these impacts can better prepare exporters for potential changes in trade quantity given a disease event.

107 Traceability

Abstract Animal disease traceability—or knowing where diseased and at-risk animals are, where they’ve been, and when—is important to ensuring a rapid response when animal disease events take place. Although animal disease traceability does not prevent disease, an efficient and accurate traceability system reduces the number of animals and response time involved in a disease investigation; which, in turn, reduces the economic impact on owners and affected communities. The current approach to traceability in the United States is the result of significant discussion and compromise. Federal policy regarding traceability has been amended several times over the past decade based on stakeholder feedback, particularly from the cattle industry. In early 2010, USDA announced a new approach for responding to and controlling animal diseases, referred to as the ADT framework. USDA published a proposed rule, “Traceability for Livestock Moving Interstate,” on August 11, 2011, and the final rule on January 9, 2013. Under the final rule, unless specifically exempted, livestock moved interstate must be officially identified and accompanied by an interstate certificate of veterinary inspection (ICVI) or other documentation. However, these requirements do not apply to all cattle. Beef cattle under 18 months of age, unless they are moved interstate for shows, exhibitions, rodeos, or recreational events, are exempt from the official identification requirement in this rule. We can do better. Our industry must recognize how vulnerable we really are, should we be subject to a disease such as foot and mouth. We must also understand what a competitive disadvantage the United States faces in the global marketplace without a recognized, industry-wide traceability system.

Animal health economics: an aid to decisionmaking on animal health interventions - case studies in the United States of America.

For animal disease events the outcomes and consequences often remain unclear or uncertain, including the expected changes in benefits (e.g. profit to firms, prices to consumers) and in costs (e.g. response, clean-up). Moreover, the measurement of changes in benefits and costs across alternative interventions used to control animal disease events may be inexact. For instance, the economic consequences of alternative vaccination strategies to mitigate a disease can vary in magnitude due to trade embargoes and other factors. The authors discuss the economic measurement of animal disease outbreaks and interventions and how measurement is used in private and public decision-making. Two illustrative case studies in the United States of America are provided: a hypothetical outbreak of foot and mouth disease in cattle, and the 2014-2015 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry.

Reported health conditions in animals residing near natural gas wells in southwestern Pennsylvania

Natural gas extraction activities, including the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, may pose potential health risks to both human and animal populations in close proximity to sites of extraction activity. Because animals may have increased exposure to contaminated water and air as well as increased susceptibility to contaminant exposures compared to nearby humans, animal disease events in communities living near natural gas extraction may provide “sentinel” information useful for human health risk assessment. Community health evaluations as well as health impact assessments (HIAs) of natural gas exploration should therefore consider the inclusion of animal health metrics in their assessment process. We report on a community environmental health survey conducted in an area of active natural gas drilling, which included the collection of health data on 2452 companion and backyard animals residing in 157 randomly-selected households of Washington County, Pennsylvania (USA). There were a total of 127 reported health conditions, most commonly among dogs. When reports from all animals were considered, there were no significant associations between reported health condition and household proximity to natural gas wells. When dogs were analyzed separately, we found an elevated risk of ‘any’ reported health condition in households less than 1km from the nearest gas well (OR = 3.2, 95% CI 1.07–9.7), with dermal conditions being the most common of canine disorders. While these results should be considered hypothesis generating and preliminary, they suggest value in ongoing assessments of pet dogs as well as other animals to better elucidate the health impacts of natural gas extraction on nearby communities.

Tuberculosis in alpaca (Lama pacos) on a farm in Ireland. 2. Results of an epidemiological investigation

Tuberculosis (TB), due to infection with Mycobacterium bovis was diagnosed in a flock of alpaca in Ireland in 2004. An epidemiological investigation was conducted to identify the risk of TB for farmed alpaca where TB is endemic, the origin of the infection, the potential for alpaca-to-alpaca transmission and appropriate control measures. The investigation focused on the alpaca flock (including the farm, animal movements and breeding, feeding and flock health practice), the disease episode (including animal disease events and subsequent control measures) and TB infection risk in the locality. The TB risk to alpaca is high in areas where infection is endemic in cattle and badgers and where biosecurity is inadequate. It is most likely that the source of infection for the alpaca was a local strain of M. bovis, present in cattle in this area since at least 2001. Genotyping of isolates identified a single variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) profile in both cattle and alpaca in this region. Although a tuberculous badger was also removed from the vicinity, bacterial isolation was not attempted. On this farm, infection in alpaca was probably derived from a common source. Alpaca-to-alpaca transmission seems unlikely. Two broad control strategies were implemented, aimed at the rapid removal of infected (and potentially infectious) animals and the implementation of measures to limit transmission. Tests that proved useful in detecting potentially-infected animals included measurement of the albumin-to-globulin ratio and regular body condition scoring. Skin testing was time consuming and unproductive, and early detection of infected animals remains a challenge. The flock was managed as a series of separate groupings, based on perceived infection risk. No further TB cases have been detected.

Planes nacionales de sanidad de los animales acuáticos: la experiencia australiana

Following a major pilchard (Sardinops sagax) mortality event in 1995, Australia recognised the need for a national approach to aquatic animal health, particularly with respectto disease response. Cooperation between industry and government led to the development of AQUAPLAN, Australia's National Strategic Plan for Aquatic Animal Health. Under AQUAPLAN, institutional arrangements for the national technical response to aquatic animal health emergencies were developed based on existing arrangements for terrestrial animal health. The number and range of Australian Aquatic Veterinary Emergency Plan (AQUAVETPLAN) manuals are rising steadily; these are manuals that outline Australia's approach to national disease preparedness and propose the technical response and control strategies to be activated. Additional resources include standard diagnostic techniques and a disease field identification guide. Simulation exercises provide training to respond to aquatic emergency animal disease events. While resource issues and addressing governance remain priorities for the further implementation of AQUAPLAN, the highest priority is the development of a formal arrangement between governments and private sectors on the response to an aquatic emergency animal disease event.

Animals as Sentinels of Bioterrorism Agents

We conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature from 1966 to 2005 to determine whether animals could provide early warning of a bioterrorism attack, serve as markers for ongoing exposure risk, and amplify or propagate a bioterrorism outbreak. We found evidence that, for certain bioterrorism agents, pets, wildlife, or livestock could provide early warning and that for other agents, humans would likely manifest symptoms before illness could be detected in animals. After an acute attack, active surveillance of wild or domestic animal populations could help identify many ongoing exposure risks. If certain bioterrorism agents found their way into animal populations, they could spread widely through animal-to-animal transmission and prove difficult to control. The public health infrastructure must look beyond passive surveillance of acute animal disease events to build capacity for active surveillance and intervention efforts to detect and control ongoing outbreaks of disease in domestic and wild animal populations.

A review of recent unexpected animal disease events in Japan and Korea and the follow-up action taken

In Japan, the need to improve countermeasures against biological weapons was recognised after the Aum Shinrikyo cult attempted to use biological weapons in 1995. This paper describes how the two relevant ministries in Japan worked together to cope with recent disease outbreaks, including cases of classical swine fever (CSF) and avian influenza, which evidence suggests might have been the result of the deliberate misuse of unauthorised vaccines that had been illegally imported. By implementing successful control measures the two ministries were able to eradicate all the diseases within very short periods. In the past few years, the Republic of Korea has also experienced outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, highly pathogenic avian influenza, and CSF, all of which had previously been absent (or had been eradicated) in Korea. A review of the historical background, major events of the outbreaks and the control measures which were implemented are presented here.

Emergency management — An important addition to the equine practitioner's armamentarium

Emergency management consists of 4 components—mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. All 4 are necessary for an effective plan to address the next bioterrorist attack, emerging infectious disease, or foreign animal disease that may compromise our animal populations. Emergency management plans developed at the local level must coordinate with such plans at the state level, which then should ultimately coordinate at the federal level. Because the equine industry is such an economically important one in the United States, it is particularly susceptible to the devastating repercussions of natural and contrived disasters. It is essential that veterinarians remain vigilant in detecting emerging infectious or foreign animal disease events, be informed about how to contact the state and federal authorities to report their suspicions, and assist their clients with any emergency management strategies, so as to minimize losses.

Dealing with animal disease emergencies in Africa: prevention and preparedness.

Emergency preparedness planning for animal diseases is a relatively new concept that is only now being applied in Africa. Information can be drawn from numerous recent disease epidemics involving rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) and Rift Valley fever. These examples clearly demonstrate the shortcomings and value of effective early warning with ensured early reaction in the control of transboundary animal disease events. In concert, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), through the Emergency Prevention-System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases (EMPRES), and Organisation of African Unity/Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (OAU/IBAR), through the European Commission-funded Pan-African Rinderpest Campaign (PARC), have been actively promoting the concepts and application of emergency preparedness planning and should continue to do so under the proposed successor of PARC, namely: the Pan-African Programme for the Control of Epizootics (PACE). The potential partnership between the normative function of the FAO in developing and promoting emergency preparedness and the implementation of improved national and regional disease surveillance by PACE and other partners could witness the commencement of more progressive control of epidemic diseases in Africa and greater self-reliance by African countries in coping with transboundary animal disease emergencies.