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1n. Control of bovine viral diarrhoea virus in livestock through evidence-driven behaviour changes on farms and through veterinarians

Summary of the impact

Impact: Economic / animal health and welfare: Established health schemes to control Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) on Scottish farms and subsequently underpinned the rationale for cost-effective control strategies that have been adopted in health schemes around the UK. The farm-level savings to the industry from future eradication are estimated by Scottish Government to be £50- £80m.

Significance: BVD is a major endemic disease of cattle in Scotland costing the dairy industry about £38M per year and an additional £11M to consumers.

Beneficiaries: Farmers, cattle, animal health authorities.

Attribution: Professors Gunn and Stott (SRUC).

Reach: The associated health schemes began in Scotland (HI Health) and now operate throughout Britain (UK CHeCS (Cattle Health Certification Standards) Health Scheme). The research underpins BVD control schemes in Ireland and other EU Member States resulting in an avoided output loss of between €500 to €4,000 per dairy farm per year.

Submitting Institutions

University of Edinburgh,SRUC

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Environmental

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Animal Production

Driving the Worldwide One Health Response to the Threat of Avian Influenza

Summary of the impact

Pioneering interdisciplinary research at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) has enabled governments internationally and global health authorities to respond swiftly to the outbreak of a disease that causes huge economic losses, threatens the livelihoods of vulnerable populations in the developing world and endangers human lives. Supported by proactive dissemination, it has shaped the control policies and risk management strategies of the United Nations and governments across Asia, Africa and Europe, as well as a national contingency plan for the UK. And it has demonstrated that costly vaccination campaigns and mass culling programmes can be avoided in efforts to bring the disease under control.

Submitting Institution

Royal Veterinary College

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Clinical Sciences, Public Health and Health Services, Other Medical and Health Sciences

British Dairy Herd National Mastitis Control Scheme. The "DairyCo Mastitis Control Plan"

Summary of the impact

The University of Nottingham (UoN) led research that resulted in the design, evaluation and national implementation of a new approach to mastitis control on British dairy farms; the `DairyCo Mastitis Control Plan'. The programme, which commenced in 2009, was implemented on farms holding 10-15% of all British dairy cows. The uptake of the scheme is continually increasing and has generated savings to the British dairy industry to the order of £5-10M per annum.

Submitting Institution

University of Nottingham

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Economic

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Animal Production

Improved animal health and welfare and economic benefits for farmers from better management of parasites in livestock

Summary of the impact

Research conducted at the University of Bristol between 2003 and 2012 on the ecology, epidemiology and control of parasitic flies and worms has improved animal health and welfare in the UK and is addressing a major constraint on global food production — animal disease, particularly in the context of climate change. These are some of the impacts:

  • In 2011, industry benefited from research on blowfly strike which has provided scientific evidence that strategic early treatment of sheep reduces season-long disease risk and results in financial savings for farmers, particularly where earlier emergence of flies occurs in response to warming temperatures.
  • Between 2008 and 2012, farmers realised a 73% direct saving in the monitoring of gastrointestinal nematodes due to the development of a composite faecal worm egg count (FEC) test and a decrease of up to 75% in the number of treatments given to lambs.
  • Farmers and livestock benefited from the slower development of anthelmintic-resistant parasites as a result of targeted treatment using the composite FEC test developed.

Submitting Institution

University of Bristol

Unit of Assessment

Biological Sciences

Summary Impact Type

Environmental

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Animal Production, Veterinary Sciences
Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services

Preventing infectious livestock disease in Britain: The implications of history for policy and practice

Summary of the impact

Infectious livestock disease poses a major threat to food production, animal welfare, trade, rural ways of life, and sometimes human health. Traditionally, the British government and the veterinary profession have approached its control in top-down fashion, relying on evidence from science and economics. However, controversy over the handling of the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic precipitated the recognition of social and cultural influences on understandings of disease and attitudes to their control. Woods' research has brought to light the `human factor' which has operated in the past to influence government, veterinary and farming perceptions of and reactions to livestock disease. Her findings have informed contemporary disease control initiatives, contributed to a culture change in the ways that vets and policy makers think about livestock disease, and convinced them that history offers an important evidence base. Woods' foot and mouth disease research has also had impact in South Korea in the wake of an epidemic there.

Submitting Institution

King's College London

Unit of Assessment

History

Summary Impact Type

Environmental

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Veterinary Sciences

1i. Eliminating trypanosome carriage in Ugandan cattle prevents sleeping sickness in humans, stimulating the formation of “Stamp Out Sleeping Sickness (SoS)” a Public Private Partnership that is eliminating the disease from Uganda

Summary of the impact

Impact: Economics, policy, animal and human health: In 2006, SoS (a Public Private Partnership-PPP) was established involving: University of Edinburgh, a pharmaceutical company, a charity, and the Govt. of Uganda to control sleeping sickness by eliminating Trypanasome carriage in cattle. The prevalence of trypanosomiasis has been reduced by 75% and sleeping sickness cases have fallen year on year since the PPP was established and Uganda has received a cost benefit between US$125 and $400M

Beneficiaries: The Ugandan population, Ugandan Cattle population.

Significance: Sleeping sickness, which is difficult to diagnose and treat in humans, is often fatal. Ten million Ugandans are at risk from sleeping sickness. SoS established a veterinary network in Uganda producing

Attribution: Professor Welburn (University of Edinburgh, UoE) founded SoS and developed essential diagnostic techniques.

Reach: SoS provides a model for the elimination of the disease across sub Saharan Africa in an economically sustainable fashion - with over 22 million people at risk.

Submitting Institutions

University of Edinburgh,SRUC

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Environmental

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Animal Production, Veterinary Sciences
Medical and Health Sciences: Medical Microbiology

A Novel Way to Detect Infection Status of Wildlife likely to have Bovine Tuberculosis (‘Badger Infection Forensics’)

Summary of the impact

A novel, reliable, non-invasive and rapid method has been developed to detect excretion of Mycobacterium bovis, the causal agent of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), into the environment ("shedding") by wildlife hosts. This test has been used to establish the efficacy of the bTB vaccine on reducing environmental contamination by shedding of M. bovis in the faeces (from January 2010). It has also become an important monitoring tool used by VisaVet (European Veterinary Health Surveillance), targeting bTB in wild boar and red deer (from July 2010) to establish bTB reservoirs and take action to protect the cattle stocks. Farmers will benefit and now be able to monitor environmental contamination by M. bovis, which allows them to establish biosecurity best practice.

The method includes both a presence/absence score and a quantitative assay of infectious disease load in faecal matter in the environment. This is the first standard assay to determine environmental contamination, the main route for disease spread to cattle, and allows evaluation of the impacts of vaccination, culling and increased movement of badgers during disease- management strategies. This test also enables precise monitoring of cattle herds infected with bovine tuberculosis (bTB) as it advances from the South West to the North East of England.

Submitting Institution

University of Warwick

Unit of Assessment

Biological Sciences

Summary Impact Type

Environmental

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Animal Production, Veterinary Sciences
Medical and Health Sciences: Medical Microbiology

Mathematical modelling of livestock infection to inform policy for future epidemics and control of disease outbreaks

Summary of the impact

Mathematical modelling of livestock infections and disease control policies is an important part of planning for future epidemics and informing policy during an outbreak of infectious disease. Researchers in the Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, are considered to be at the cutting-edge of developing policy-orientated mathematical modelling for a number of livestock infections. Such models have been used to inform government policy for foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and a range of other infections including bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and bee infections. From 2008, their work with responsible national and international agencies has focused on statistical inference from early outbreak data, formulating models and inferring parameter values for bTB infection spread within and between farms, developing predictive models of FMD outbreaks in the USA, and extending such models to areas where FMD is endemic. This research has helped to shape policy and determined how policy-makers perceive and use predictive models in real-time.

Submitting Institution

University of Warwick

Unit of Assessment

Mathematical Sciences

Summary Impact Type

Environmental

Research Subject Area(s)

Mathematical Sciences: Statistics
Medical and Health Sciences: Clinical Sciences, Public Health and Health Services

Improving health of pedigree dog breeds

Summary of the impact

Veterinarians have long recognised health problems associated with in-breeding and extreme conformation in various pedigree dogs. However, the `Pedigree Dogs Exposed' documentary in 2008, which particularly featured the plight of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels (CKCS), and resultant independent inquiry reports, to which RVC contributed, brought the extent and severity of the issue into the public eye. RVC's ongoing programme of research linked to interaction with stakeholders has contributed to the changes in breed standards instituted by the Kennel Club (KC); understanding of underlying principles governing the relationship between structure and function and affecting desired traits; developing tools to address conformation-related health problems; and driving changes in breeding practice leading to healthier dogs.

Submitting Institution

Royal Veterinary College

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Clinical Sciences

Improving use of available controls against bovine tuberculosis

Summary of the impact

Despite increasing surveillance, outbreaks of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in the UK have steadily increased over the past two decades, with the disease now costing an estimated £100 million per annum in test and slaughter costs, and compensation payments.

Research by Professor Wood and Drs McKinley and Conlan has determined that successful control efforts will depend upon within-herd surveillance and also on reducing reintroduction from external sources; these results have directly altered the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) new (July 2013) bovine TB strategy for England, which directly cites Dr Conlan's research when justifying changes in proposed regulations. On publication this research prompted questions during bovine Tuberculosis debates in both Westminster and the Scottish Parliament by Andrew George (MP, St. Ives) and Helen Eadie (MSP, Cowdenbeath) respectively. The work has also received national and specialist media coverage raising public awareness and understanding of bTB control in cattle.

Submitting Institution

University of Cambridge

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Economic

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Clinical Sciences

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