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1. Harrisvaccines given conditional license for Avian Influenza vaccine
By Austin Harrington, Staff writer
Ames Tribune
September 21, 2015
Ames-based vaccine producer, Harrisvaccines announced Monday that it has been granted a conditional license from the USDA for the company's Avian Influenza Vaccine, RNA.
This is the first conditional license granted by the USDA to combat avian influenza since the outbreak in the spring of 2015 that resulted in the infection and death of more than 50 million chickens and turkeys, 31 million in Iowa alone.
The outbreak resulted in Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad declaring a state of emergency in May.
Joel Harris, vice president of Harrisvaccines, said although the vaccine is not currently allowed to be sold in the United States under USDA regulations, being granted the conditional license is an important step in preventing another outbreak.
"If the USDA decides to order a stockpile or allow the vaccine to be used in an outbreak situation, we're ready to basically turn on production and we can start providing millions of doses almost immediately," Harris said.
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2. Five VS cases confirmed, additional tests pending [NE - edited]
Rapid City Journal
September 22, 2015
Several cases of vesicular stomatitis have been confirmed in horses in Scotts Bluff and Sioux counties.
Nebraska State Veterinarian Dr. Dennis Hughes said the horses and other livestock have been placed under quarantine.
The Nebraska Department of Agriculture has confirmed five cases of the disease, four in Scotts Bluff County and one in Sioux County. Tests are pending in five additional cases; another four animals are being tested in Scotts Bluff County and one in Lincoln County.
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3. VT Health Dept.: EEE Detected in Batch of Mosquitoes
By Joe Gullo
MyChamplainValley.com
September 21, 2015
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- The Vermont Health Department says Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) was discovered in a batch of mosquitoes collected in Swanton on September 14.
Officials say this is the first detection of the disease in Vermont this year.
"The highest risk for human infections is this time of year," said Patsy Kelso, state epidemiologist for infectious disease. "We predicted going into this mosquito season that the Swanton area, due to prior years, had a moderate risk for EEE, so the detection was not unexpected."
The risk for mosquito-borne illness will continue until the first hard frost of the year, according to health officials.
No human or animal cases have been reported so far in 2015.
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4. After bird flu outbreak, Nebraska and Iowa look to rebuild [eidted]
By Barbara Soderlin, World-Herald staff writer
Omaha World-Herald
September 22, 2015
Animal health officials are checking the skies for signs avian influenza could strike again, even as Nebraska and Iowa poultry farmers prepare barns for new flocks of chickens to replace those killed in this spring's outbreak.
Animal health officials say they are taking lessons learned in the outbreak to prepare for the coming season.
Meanwhile, producers are moving ahead to restock barns and get their businesses running again. About one in 10 of the country's population of egg-laying chickens was killed as a result of the outbreak.
In Nebraska, where 3.8 million birds were affected in one county - Dixon - the State Department of Agriculture is talking to egg producers about how to limit the spread of a virus between barns, Director Greg Ibach said.
He said the department has not put a dollar figure on the impact to the state economy, but that the outbreak cost jobs and depressed spending on feed and other farm costs.
In Iowa, the state hit hardest this spring, with 32 million birds affected in 17 counties, nearly all of the 71 commercial poultry farm sites affected have finished cleaning and disinfecting barns, the State Agriculture Department said.
Eighteen of those have been cleared for restocking. Most are still testing to ensure that the virus is not still present, a 21-day process.
As at Post, it will take Iowa producers more than a year, until the end of 2016, to fully restock their flocks of laying hens.
"You can't just create these hens out of thin air," Iowa Poultry Association executive director Randy Olson said.
It takes about 20 weeks to raise a newborn chick into a laying hen, and the supply of these young hens, called pullets, is limited given the high demand, Olson said. A typical hen lays for about two years - about 100 weeks - so the industry typically has only about 20 percent as many pullets as it has hens.
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5. Purdue food safety technology ready for commercial development
Feedstuffs
September 21, 2015
Quality control facilities in the food industry and the federal government can use new technology developed by a team of Purdue University researchers to speed up the process of detecting pathogens like salmonella in fruits, vegetables, meat and other food.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated one in six Americans is sickened by foodborne illnesses annually, resulting in about 3,000 deaths. Salmonella is the leading cause of deaths and hospitalizations related to foodborne illness, estimated to cause 380 deaths and 19,000 hospitalizations in the U.S. each year.
Michael Ladisch, distinguished professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering, led a team that created a method to process food samples much faster than traditional methods. In July, the technology won the grand prize in the 2014 FDA Food Safety Challenge. The team received $300,000 in prize money to further develop the technology.
Ladisch said the detection of food pathogens, or microorganisms that cause food-based illness, in the U.S. is excellent. He said the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the food industry are able to detect pathogens, identify them, and their sources.
"The challenge they now face is being able to test more samples more quickly, so that the time between when a food pathogen might be present and when it is detected would be shortened," he said. "Our technology makes it possible to process the samples more quickly, in hours instead of days."
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6. Changes in dairy industry benefit dairy cattle health and welfare and consumers
Elsevier Health Sciences
EurekAlert.com
September 22, 2015
Philadelphia, PA - Profound changes in the dairy industry in recent decades have benefited the health and welfare of dairy cows, as well as consumers. A team of dairy science experts provides valuable insights into these changes, as well as the science behind them, and also identify knowledge gaps and further research needs. Their review is published in the current issue of the Journal of Dairy Science�.
"Economic pressures, technological innovations, demographic shifts, consumer expectations, and an evolving regulatory framework have all contributed to the impetus for changes in the global dairy industry," explained lead investigator Herman Barkema, DVM, PhD, Professor, Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Infectious Diseases of Dairy Cattle, Department of Production Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, at the University of Calgary, Canada. "These changes have had, and will likely continue to have, profound effects on the health and welfare of dairy cows and on management practices and systems for dairy herds."
Barkema and colleagues examined the key changes taking place in the dairy industry in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the implications of which are relevant for the dairy industry in most developed and developing nations.
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