Author Archives: Susan MacMillan

A4NH / Agri-Health / Agriculture / Animal Diseases / Bird flu / Emerging Diseases / ILRI / North America / 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 / Agriculture / Brazil / Food Security / Malawi / Opinion piece / Soils

African agriculture: Basket case or bread basket?

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(Illustration on Flickr by Vintaga Posters.) Is Africa an agricultural basket case, or a potential bread basket? Michael Moran, in the GlobalPost, argues the case for the latter. ‘. . . Food security remains a problem in Malawi, as elsewhere in the so-called Guinea Savannah—a huge belt of arable (and largely untilled) land with unpredictable … Continue reading →

Animal Breeding / Animal Production / Article / Climate Change / Environment / ILRI

Climate change and livestock scientists: Relations warming as understanding grows

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Illustration, ‘Meat and Methane’, by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com. A recent news feature in Nature Climate Change, Light is cast on a long shadow, notes the warming relations (forgive the pun) between scientists in the livestock and climate change communities. ‘The fields of climate change and livestock research have not always been cosy bedfellows. But they are … Continue reading →

Animal Health / Award / Disease Control / Epidemiology / ILRI / RVF

British Veterinary Association bestows award on former ILRI veterinary scientist Brian Perry

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Brian Perry working in his study where he and his wife, Helena, now live, in the Rift Valley of Kenya (photo credit: Brian Perry). On 27 Sep 2012, Professor Brian Perry won the Trevor Blackburn Award of the British Veterinary Association ‘in recognition of his outstanding contributions to animal health and welfare in Africa, Asia … Continue reading →

Agriculture / Books and chapters / CGIAR / CRPs / Impact Assessment / Research

40-year CGIAR history published: Lots of lessons for the ‘New CGIAR’

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From CGIAR comes a new ‘look back’ at its evolution over 40 years. The book is titled The CGIAR at 40: Institutional Evolution of the World’s Premier Agricultural Research Network. It was written by Selçuk Özgediz, a Turkish national who was affiliated with CGIAR for 27 years, the last several years as management adviser to the CGIAR Secretariat … Continue reading →

Africa / Animal Health / Disease Control / Epidemiology / ILRI / RVF

‘Zoonoses’–diseases that pass from animals to humans–are again making headlines

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An initiative called the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, which is hosted by the UK’s STEPS Centre, at the Institute of Development Studies, in Brighton, issued a news release today regarding the science and poverty implications of transmissions of animal-to-human diseases. This comes upon reports by UK officials this week of a the … Continue reading →

Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Ethiopia / Food Security / Geodata / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / PPR / Vulnerability

Eyes in the sky: ‘Index-based’ livestock insurance for pastoral herders pilot ‘a significant success’

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An artist’s rendition of the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) that will launch in Feb 2013 (photo credit: NASA). The Landsat program is the longest continuous global record of Earth observations from space—ever. Since its first satellite went up in the summer of 1972, Landsat has been looking at our planet. The … Continue reading →

Article / Cattle / Disease Control / Epidemiology / Goats / ILRI / Pastoralism / PPR / Sheep / Vaccines

New Scientist’s Fred Pearce reports on ‘How African herders rid the planet of a disease’

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Tom Olaka, a community animal health worker in Karamajong, northern Uganda, was part of a vaccination campaign in remote areas of the Horn of Africa that drove the cattle plague rinderpest to extinction in 2010 (photo credit: Christine Jost). Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist about How African herders rid the planet of a disease, … Continue reading →

Article / Disease Control / Epidemiology / Goats / ILRI / Pastoralism / PPR / Sheep / Sudan / Uganda / Vaccines

ILRI’s Jeff Mariner speaks on what he learned from the eradication of rinderpest–and his new fight against ‘goat plague’

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ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeff Mariner presents his research at a meeting of the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) (photo credit: OIE). Lauren Everitt of AllAfrica interviewed Jeffrey Mariner, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, about a current article he co-authored in Science (13 Sep 2012) on lessons learned in the eradication … Continue reading →

Animal Production / Books and chapters / Consumption / Food Security / Human Health / Livelihoods / Pro-Poor Livestock / Research / Zoonotic Diseases

New FAO book spells out rationale, priorities for investing in livestock development to reduce poverty

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A new FAO study reports that more than 85 per cent of poor livestock keepers in sub-Saharan Africa live in extreme poverty; here, at a Toureg encampment near Fakara, in Niger, a boy herds a prized animal, and asset, of his family (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann). A new book on the intersection of poverty reduction … Continue reading →