As reported this week by Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel in the New York Times, ‘Kibera residents are prodigious consumers of antibiotics’. Kibera area, one of Africa’s largest urban slums, is located in Nairobi, Kenya, with a population of around one million. Most people in the sl um lack access to running water, electricity … Continue reading
As reported this week by Jacqueline Ogada, a journalist at SciDevNet, the director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) said recently that ‘reducing the use of antimicrobials in agriculture as well as medicine . . . can make a huge difference’ in protecting public health. ILRI director general Jimmy Smith said this at … Continue reading
Reuters reported Sunday that this first batch of “transgenic” chicks is expected to hatch sometime in 2019 at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Continue reading
The narrative posited by cultured meat proponents is that animal agriculture requires large amounts of land and water and produces high levels of greenhouse gases (GHG). The environmental impacts of a product, such as a beef hamburger, is then compared to the anticipatory ones for producing a cultured hamburger patty through tissue engineering-based cellular agriculture. While it is true that conventional meat production has a large environmental footprint, the problem with this dichotomous framing is that it overlooks the rest of the story. Continue reading
The British High Commissioner to Kenya, His Excellency Mr Nic Hailey, made a courtesy visit to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on Tuesday, 31 July 2018. Continue reading
According to Reuters, the Gates Foundation will pump $40m into research for higher-yielding dairy cows, as well as chickens that lay better quality eggs, livestock vaccines and ‘supercrops’ that can withstand droughts or disease. Continue reading
During the visit Ms Mordaunt also announced plans to develop the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, which is based in both Edinburgh and Nairobi. The centre uses the most recent scientific advances in genetics and genomics that are being used by farmers in the UK and apply these to help smallholder dairy and poultry farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Continue reading
