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1. Iowa County deer tests positive for chronic wasting disease [WI]
By Amanda Finn
Wisconsin State Journal
January 30, 2016
A white-tailed deer on a quarantined farm in Iowa County has tested positive for chronic wasting disease, State Veterinarian Paul McGraw said Friday [Jan. 29].
According to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP), the 2-year-old buck - which was born on the farm and killed after sustaining an injury - was one of 15 deer living on the one-acre farm.
The Iowa County farm's deer are only used for public exhibition and do not move anywhere except for slaughter - the farm has been quarantined since 2008 when wild deer in a five-mile radius tested positive for chronic wasting disease, DATCP said.
DATCP took samples from the buck on Jan. 9 for testing and the results were confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
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2. EHV-1 Confirmed in DuPage County, Illinois
By Erica Larson, News Editor
TheHorse.com
February 1, 2016
The Illinois Department of Agriculture has reported that several horses tested positive for neurologic equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) late last month.
"On January 28, the Bureau of Animal Health and Welfare received notification of laboratory confirmation of EHV-1 (neuropathogenic form) infection in horses being boarded at a private stable in DuPage County," the department said in a statement. "The stable has been placed under quarantine by state animal health officials. The source of the exposure is unknown. At the time of notification, eight horses were affected with two being subsequently euthanized."
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3. New Mexico EHV Update: 28 Horses Test Positive
By Erica Larson, News Editor
TheHorse.com
February 1, 2016
The number of horses that have tested positive for equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) at Sunland Park racetrack, in New Mexico, continues to rise, while officials in Arizona report that one horse euthanized after developing neurologic signs was confirmed positive for the virus.
In a Jan. 30 update, the New Mexico Livestock Board reported that 28 horses have now tested positive for EHV-1 on nasal swab and/or whole blood testing.
"These horses are from 17 different barns within Sunland Park racetrack; at present, horses in surrounding areas have tested negative," the board's statement said. "Of these 28, four horses have been euthanized for progressive neurologic signs. No movement of horses is being allowed in or out of Sunland Park."
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4. Planning for a disease outbreak? There's a game for that.
By Anne Ju Manning
Colorado State Univ. News Release
February 1, 2016
Computer scientists and statisticians at Colorado State University are turning disease outbreak planning exercises into a game. They're creating powerful new software that can predict, simulate and analyze a major disease outbreak - all in the form of an intuitive, multiplayer game.
Researchers led by Shrideep Pallickara, associate professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences, are in year one of a three-year, $2.04 million Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate grant. The project is aimed at connecting the latest, greatest computing and data management technology to the fight against widespread livestock disease.
Livestock disease outbreaks can spread far and fast across the U.S. From foot and mouth disease in cattle to avian influenza, the illnesses can wreak havoc on animals, the industrial food system and the economy.
"When a disease breaks out, you need to know - how severe is it? How long will it last? How many field personnel do you need? What are the economic consequences? How will commodity prices be affected? What will happen if you start vaccinating?" Pallickara said.
Computer scientists are used to dealing with hundreds or thousands of variables and running what-if scenarios. The Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health, and other outbreak specialists such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, respond to emergencies by identifying a handful of scenarios. Then they can change parameters for each scenario - adjusting variables including disease biology and virulence - to help determine action plans for things like vaccine stockpiles, vaccine efficacy, and deploying field personnel. But that whole process can take hours or days; meanwhile, the disease spreads.
"In these cases, sometimes hours elapse between modifying your scenario, running it, and getting your response back," Pallickara said. "What we do instead is, given a national scale outbreak scenario, we generate 100,000 variants, run them in a computing cloud that generates several billion files, and then do the analytics on all this data. So even if a user is trying to change something in real time, we have already learned what will happen. This involves a lot of back-end processing, which allows us to make real-time predictions."
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5. Athens poultry disease research lab to receive $60 million in renovations [GA]
By Margaret Shin
RedandBlack.com
February 1, 2016
The United State Congress has apportioned nearly $114 million to update the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens. In addition to around $45 million that was dedicated to the project in the United States Department of Agriculture's 2015 budget, this sets the total spending at about $160 million on the renovations.
The project aims to replace several of the old buildings and repair critical mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems for several buildings.
"The modernization of the laboratory dramatically impacts capabilities of USDA and Agricultural Research Service scientists to address poultry research," said Dr. Todd Applegate, head of the Department of Poultry Science. "Regarding benefits to [the University of Georgia], it is largely through collaborations and partnerships with their scientists that broaden all of our abilities to discover solutions and create innovations for the future of poultry."
The funding from Congress is specifically designated for the modernization of the laboratory's facilities and for expansion and hiring of staff, said Christopher Bentley, director of the Agricultural Research Service, in an email to the Red & Black.
"The modernization plan is currently under development, but it is anticipated that the majority of the current buildings will be replaced with new buildings that provide scientists with more efficient space to implement ARS research programs," Bentley said.
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6. New Weapon to Fight Zika: The Mosquito
By Andrew Pollack
The New York Times
January 30, 2016
Every weekday at 7 a.m., a van drives slowly through the southeastern Brazilian city of Piracicaba carrying a precious cargo - mosquitoes. More than 100,000 of them are dumped from plastic containers out the van's window, and they fly off to find mates.
But these are not ordinary mosquitoes. They have been genetically engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, which die before they can reach adulthood. In small tests, this approach has lowered mosquito populations by 80 percent or more.
The biotech bugs could become one of the newest weapons in the perennial battle between humans and mosquitoes, which kill hundreds of thousands of people a year by transmitting malaria, dengue fever and other devastating diseases and have been called the deadliest animal in the world.
"When it comes to killing humans, no other animal even comes close," Bill Gates, whose foundation fights disease globally, has written.
The battle has abruptly become more pressing by what the World Health Organization has called the "explosive" spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus through Brazil and other parts of Latin America. Experts say that new methods are needed because the standard practices - using insecticides and removing the standing water where mosquitoes breed - have not proved sufficient.
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7. A Road Map to Control and Contain Zoonotic Diseases
Kansas City infoZine
January 30, 2016
Rome - infoZine - Infectious animal-borne disease threats such as Ebola and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) are here to stay, and further painful outbreaks are likely to flare up or new disease threats will definitely emerge in the near future, said Juan Lubroth, FAO's chief veterinarian, querying whether the world is prepared to detect them and prevent their spread.
To better assess and manage such outbreaks in the future, policy makers must foster an integrated research program mapping out both what is and what is not known about the transmission dynamics and spillover patterns of the two recent epidemics, as well as promoting collaboration and stronger surveillance and diagnostic networks, according to FAO, which with USAID as funding partner and sponsor, hosted researchers and policy makers from around the world to technical meetings on Ebola and MERS in Rome this month.
"Critical gaps remain in our knowledge of how these diseases are transmitted, both to humans and potential animal host species, as well as their epidemiology and the risk they may pose to food safety as well as food security for populations that depend on livestock or hunting," according to Lubroth.
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