Category Archives: North America

Agriculture / Article / Asia / Biotechnology / Environment / Genetics / ILRI / India / North America / PA / Seeds / USA

‘Nature’ takes a hard look at the ‘messy middle ground’ — the ‘difficult adolescence’ — of GM crops

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Cover of a special issue of ‘Nature’ on GMOs, 2 May 2013. The leading British science journal Nature has published a special issue on GM crops: Promise and reality  (2 May 2013). This hub of updated science-based information on GM crops includes feature news stories, commentaries, a podcast and more. ‘Foreign genes were successfully introduced into … Continue reading »

Agri-Health / Agriculture / Animal Diseases / CRP4 / Emerging Diseases / ILRI / MarketOpps / North America / PA / Pigs / Poultry / Zoonotic Diseases

The looming danger of diseases spread from farm animals to people–CNN

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A CNN report this week on ‘The looming zoonotic danger’ makes use of some astounding figures developed by veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace and her team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Kenya. ‘We’ve seen an unprecedented rise in infectious diseases in recent decades, 75 percent of which are “zoonotic,” meaning they come … Continue reading »

Africa / Animal Diseases / ASF / Asia / Biotech / Disease Control / Emerging Diseases / Europe / Event / ILRI / North America / PA / Pigs / Russia / Vaccines

African swine fever is growing threat to poor and rich countries alike

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Participants of an African swine fever workshop held in July 2011 at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters: (From left) Raymond Rowland (Kansas State University), David Odongo (ILRI), Richard Bishop (ILRI), Maria-Jesus Munoz (Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal-Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrarias) and Jose-Manuel Vizcaino (head of the World Animal Health Organisation’s African Swine Fever World Reference … Continue reading »

Africa / Animal Diseases / Biotech / CBPP / Disease Control / ILRI / Launch / North America / PA / Research / USA / Vaccines

US National Science Foundation’s BREAD funds Craig Venter and ILRI to battle cattle pneumonia in Africa

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Dinner with philanthropist Bill Gates at the home of genome-czar J Craig Venter in La Jolla, California, in 2008 (photo by jurvetson on Flickr). ‘Gates asked the most astute and detailed questions about microbiology’, JCVI reports, and said, ‘DNA is the most interesting software there is.’ The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates … Continue reading »

Drought / Food security / Kenya / North America / PA / USA

Improve US food aid by adding animal-source protein–Oxfam

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An undernourished child in Kenya drinks store-bought ‘maziwa lala’ (sour milk) (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). Eric Muñoz, a policy adviser for Oxfam America, blogs in the Guardian about a new report that takes a hard look at the commodities the US uses to respond to disaster and food insecurity, such as is unfolding in the Horn of … Continue reading »

Animal Breeding / Biotechnology / Canada / Environment / Fish / Food security / North America / PA / Pigs / Research

Eco-friendly GM pigs under development in Ontario

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Min piglets at the experimental station at the Institute for Animal Science, in Beijing, China (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). Jeremy Cooke of the BBC reports in this video on a genetically modified pig, dubbed ‘Enviro-Pig’, being developed in Ontario that may be among the first of GM farm animals developed for human consumption. (Salmon genetically modified … Continue reading »

Climate Change / CRP7 / North America / PA / Research

Climate scientists take their arguments to their skeptics

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Climate scientists gather at a meeting of the Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in Nairobi, Kenya in May 2010 (photo credit CCAFS). The Los Angeles Times reported on 8 November 2010 that climate scientists in the US are joining forces and taking their arguments to groups of global warming skeptics. … Continue reading »

Animal Feeding / Animal Production / Crop-Livestock / Livestock Systems / North America / USA

How to save the grasslands: Bring in more cattle

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To many, the Western grasslands still reflect the essence of this country: the vast plains that begin with prairie and bump up against the Rockies, home to herds of cattle and the cowboys that run them. Yet this indelible image belies the facts, as much of the nation’s rangeland has been degraded by overgrazing. Land … Continue reading »

Food Safety / North America / PA

Unsafe eggs are the latest food scare

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From an Economist article this month (4 September 2010) comes the latest ánimal source food scare in America. ‘Americans are known as hearty eaters, so a string of recent food-safety scares has shaken them to their rather wide cores. The country has already endured the economic and gastronomic damage inflicted by recent recalls of unsafe spinach, … Continue reading »

Africa / Agriculture / Brazil / Cattle / CRP5 / Environment / Food security / Latin America / Livestock / North America / NRM / Research / Soils / Water

The miracle of the cerrado

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Brazil has revolutionized its own farms. Can it do the same for others? IN A remote corner of Bahia state, in north-eastern Brazil, a vast new farm is springing out of the dry bush. Thirty years ago eucalyptus and pine were planted in this part of the cerrado (Brazil’s savannah). Native shrubs later reclaimed some … Continue reading »