��Ī - James Wood

Pork labelling schemes ‘not helpful’ in making informed buying choices, say researchers

jg533 — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 09:27:35 +0000

Researchers have evaluated different types of pig farming – including woodland, organic, free range, RSPCA assured, and Red Tractor certified, to assess each systems’ impact across four areas: land use (representing biodiversity loss), greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotics use and animal welfare. Their study concludes that none of the farm types performed consistently well across all four areas – a finding that has important implications for increasingly climate conscious consumers, as well as farmers themselves.

However, there were individual farms that did perform well in all domains, including an indoor Red Tractor farm, an outdoor bred, indoor finished RSPCA assured farm and fully outdoor woodland farm. “Outliers like these show that trade-offs are not inevitable,” said lead author Dr Harriet Bartlett, Research Associate at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, who was formerly at the ��Ī.

“Somewhat unexpectedly we found that a handful of farms perform far better than average across all four of our environmental and welfare measures,” added senior author Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science at the ��Ī. However, none of the current label or assurance schemes predicted which farms these would be.

“The way we classify farm types and label pork isn’t helpful for making informed decisions when it comes to buying more sustainable meat. Even more importantly, we aren’t rewarding and incentivising the best-performing farmers. Instead of focusing on farm types or practices, we need to focus on meaningful outcomes for people, the planet and the pigs – and assess, and reward farms based on these,” said Bartlett.

The findings also show that common assumptions around food labelling can be misplaced. For instance, Organic farming systems, which consumers might see as climate and environmentally friendly, have on average three times the CO2 output per kg of meat of more intensive Red Tractor or RSPCA assured systems and four times the land use. However, these same systems use on average almost 90% fewer antibiotic medicines, and result in improved animal welfare compared with production from Red tractor or RSPCA assured systems.

The way we classify livestock farms must be improved, Bartlett says, because livestock production is growing rapidly, especially pork production, which has quadrupled in the past 50 years and already accounts for 9% of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. Pig farming also uses more antibiotics than any other livestock sector, and 8.5% of all arable land.

“Our findings show that mitigating the environmental impacts of livestock farming isn’t a case of saying which farm type is the best,” said Bartlett. “There is substantial scope for improvement within types, and our current means of classification is not identifying the best farms for the planet and animals overall. Instead, we need to identify farms that successfully limit their impacts across all areas of societal concern, and understand, promote and incentivise their practises.”

The study reached its conclusions using data from 74 UK and 17 Brazilian breed-to-finish systems, each made up of 1-3 farms and representing the annual production of over 1.2 million pigs. It is published today in the journal Nature Food.

“To the best of our knowledge, our dataset covers by far the largest and most diverse sample of pig production systems examined in any single study,” said Bartlett.

James Wood, Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at the ��Ī, commented: “This important study identifies a key need to clarify what different farm labels should indicate to consumers; there is a pressing need to extend this work into other farming sectors. It also clearly demonstrates the critical importance that individual farmers play in promoting best practice across all farming systems.”

Trade-offs in the externalities of pig production are not inevitable was authored by academics at the University of Oxford, ��Ī and the University of São Paulo.

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Reference: Bartlett, H.,‘Trade-offs in the externalities of pig production are not inevitable.’ Nature Food, April 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s43016-024-00921-2

Adapted from a press release by the University of Oxford.

Farmers don’t have to choose between lowering environmental impact and improving welfare for their pigs, a new study has found: it is possible to do both. But this is not reflected in the current food labelling schemes relied on by consumers.

The way we classify farm types and label pork isn’t helpful for making informed decisions when it comes to buying more sustainable meat.

Harriet Bartlett

Charity Burggraaf/ Getty

Two pigs on a farm

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©��Ī and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

TB vaccine may enable elimination of the disease in cattle by reducing its spread

jg533 — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:00:16 +0000

The research, led by the ��Ī and Penn State University, improves prospects for the elimination and control of bovine tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease of cattle that results in large economic costs and health impacts across the world.

This is the first study to show that BCG-vaccinated cattle infected with TB are substantially less infectious to other cattle. This remarkable indirect effect of the vaccine beyond its direct protective effect has not been measured before.

The spillover of infection from livestock has been estimated to account for about 10% of human tuberculosis cases. While such zoonotic TB (zTB) infections are most commonly associated with gastro-intestinal infections related to drinking contaminated milk, zTB can also cause chronic lung infections in humans. Lung disease caused by zTB can be indistinguishable from regular tuberculosis, but is more difficult to treat due to natural antibiotic resistance in the cattle bacteria.

TB remains endemic in many countries around the world, including in Europe and the Americas, where its control costs farmers and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

The study is published today in the journal Science.

In the study, carried out in Ethiopia, researchers examined the ability of the vaccine, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), to directly protect cattle that receive it, as well as to indirectly protect both vaccinated and unvaccinated cattle by reducing TB transmission. Vaccinated and unvaccinated animals were put into enclosures with naturally infected animals, in a novel crossover design performed over two years.

“Our study found that BCG vaccination reduces TB transmission in cattle by almost 90%. Vaccinated cows also developed significantly fewer visible signs of TB than unvaccinated ones. This suggests that the vaccination not only reduces the progression of the disease, but that if vaccinated animals become infected, they are substantially less infectious to others,” said Andrew Conlan, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the ��Ī’s Department of Veterinary Medicine and a corresponding author of the study.

Using livestock census and movement data from Ethiopia, the team developed a transmission model to explore the potential for routine vaccination to control bovine tuberculosis.

“Results of the model suggest that vaccinating calves within the dairy sector of Ethiopia could reduce the reproduction number of the bacterium — the R0 — to below 1, arresting the projected increase in the burden of disease and putting herds on a pathway towards elimination of TB,” Conlan said.

The team focused their studies in Ethiopia, a country with the largest cattle herd in Africa and a rapidly growing dairy sector that has a growing burden of bovine tuberculosis and no current control program, as a representative of similarly situated transitional economies.

“Bovine tuberculosis is largely uncontrolled in low- and middle-income countries, including Ethiopia,” said Abebe Fromsa, associate professor of agriculture and veterinary medicine at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and the study’s co-lead author. “Vaccination of cattle has the potential to provide significant benefits in these regions.”

“For over a hundred years, programs to eliminate bovine tuberculosis have relied on intensive testing and slaughtering of infected animals,” said Vivek Kapur, professor of microbiology and infectious diseases and Huck Distinguished Chair in Global Health at Penn State and a corresponding author of the study.

He added: “This approach is unimplementable in many parts of the world for economic and social reasons, resulting in considerable animal suffering and economic losses from lost productivity, alongside an increased risk of spillover of infection to humans. By vaccinating cattle, we hope to be able to protect both cattle and humans from the consequences of this devastating disease.”

Professor James Wood, Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science in the ��Ī’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, noted that despite TB being more prevalent in lower-income countries, the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand also experience considerable economic pressures from the disease which continues to persist despite intensive and costly control programs.

Wood said: “For over twenty-years the UK government has pinned hopes on cattle vaccination for bovine tuberculosis as a solution to reduce the disease and the consequent costs of the controls. These results provide important support for the epidemiological benefit that cattle vaccination could have to reduce rates of transmission to and within herds.”

This research was supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; Economic & Social Research Council; Medical Research Council; Natural Environment Research Council; and Defence Science & Technology.

Reference: Fromsa, A. et al: ‘BCG vaccination of cattle reduces transmission of bovine tuberculosis, improving the prospects for elimination.’ Science, March 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adl3962

Vaccination not only reduces the severity of TB in infected cattle, but reduces its spread in dairy herds by 89%, research finds.

Our study suggests that vaccination not only reduces the progression of the disease, but that if vaccinated animals become infected, they are substantially less infectious to others.

Andrew Conlan

Getty/ kamisoka

Herd of cows in a grassy field

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Could bird flu spark the next pandemic - and are we prepared if it does?

jg533 — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 08:01:07 +0000

Should we be worried about frequent news reports of flu being detected in birds and other animals?

New animal welfare scoring system could enable better-informed food and farming choices

jg533 — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:01:30 +0000

This means that animal welfare can now, for the first time, be properly considered alongside other impacts of farming to help identify which farming systems are best.

This is vital for improving animal welfare in livestock production, at a time when demand for meat is rising globally and the way animals are farmed is changing - with concerns about the welfare of intensive and indoor systems.

Animal welfare assessments could also enable consumers to be better informed when choosing what to eat.

Britain has various labelling schemes for meat products to assure consumers that certain standards have been met. The team used their new system to test how the different labels compare in terms of animal welfare.

Farms producing ‘woodland’ labelled pork products scored best for pig welfare, followed by ‘organic’, then free-range, RSPCA assured, Red Tractor, and finally those with no certification.

“We have shown that it’s possible to reliably assess animal welfare on farms. This means decisions about which types of farm are better or worse for animal welfare can be based on proper calculations, rather than assumptions – as is currently the case,” said Dr Harriet Bartlett, first author of the study, who carried out this work while a researcher at the ��Ī’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. She is now a Research Associate in Sustainable Food Solutions at the University of Oxford.

Bartlett added: “Now animal welfare can be included in overall assessments of farm sustainability alongside other measures like carbon emissions and biodiversity impacts, so we can make better informed decisions about how we choose to farm and what we choose to eat.”

Coming up with an overall measurement of animal welfare has previously been difficult because of disagreement on which factors are most important. For example, is a health problem more important than a behaviour problem? What level of welfare is good enough?

The new system assesses the quality of an animal’s life through a wide-ranging set of welfare measurements, reflecting a range of concerns about welfare. The results can be integrated into a single score to enable comparison across farms.

This will enable exploration of trade-offs between animal welfare and other issues of concern to consumers, such as the impact of farming on the environment.

The results are published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Assessment of the pigs looked at everything from health problems like coughing, sneezing, and lameness, to the way they interacted: biting each other’s ears or tails, or engaging with their environment, for example.

Various scoring methods were tested - giving more or less weight to the different aspects of animal welfare - on 74 pig farming systems in the UK. The team were surprised to find that each method gave broadly the same overall result in terms of which farms, and types of farms, performed best and worst.

“Despite ongoing debate about how to measure animal welfare, we found we can identify which types of farms we might want to encourage and which we shouldn’t with reasonable consistency,” said Professor Andrew Balmford in the ��Ī’s Department of Zoology, who was involved in the study.

The new welfare measurements combine quality of life with length of life, and scores can be produced ‘per unit’ of production. The welfare scores can also allow several farms to be grouped together – for example when animals are kept on different farms at different growth stages.

“This work opens up possibilities for greater rolling out of welfare assessment scores in food labelling, including in other species as well as pigs. Until now, the methods available have made this impractical,” said Professor James Wood at the ��Ī’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, who was involved in the study.

The technique of ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ is widely used to quantify environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land use, across all stages of farm animal production. But until now there hasn’t been a way of measuring animal welfare that enables valid comparisons across different farming systems, so Life Cycle Assessments do not include it and as a result, welfare concerns have sometimes been overlooked.

Food production accounts for over a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Making farming systems more sustainable, in the face of growing global demand for meat, is a major challenge for farmers and the government.

‘Woodland’ labelled pork is from farms that provide at least partial tree cover for the pigs, and ‘Organic’ provides outdoor access for the animals. The ‘RSPCA assured’ label is welfare focused, while ‘Free range’ is not a formal assurance, but typically refers to fully outdoor farming systems. Most UK pig farms produce ‘Red Tractor’ labelled pork, which has lower production costs – translating to a lower price for consumers.

This research was funded by the BBSRC, the Royal Society, MRC, and The Alborada Trust.

Reference

Bartlett, H. et al: ‘Advancing the quantitative characterisation of farm animal welfare.’ Proc Roy Soc B. March 2023. DOI 10.1098/rspb.2023.0120

��Ī University scientists have come up with a system of measuring animal welfare that enables reliable comparison across different types of pig farming.

Harriet Bartlett

Pigs on a farm

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©��Ī and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

The Kennel Club Genetics Centre to re-open as part of the ��Ī

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:15:28 +0000

The Kennel Club Charitable Trust has funded the centre since its initial launch at the Animal Health Trust in 2009. The new centre will continue to be led by Dr Cathryn Mellersh, and will resume its mission to develop DNA tests and breeding tools for some of the most common and debilitating inherited conditions in dogs.

Professor James Wood, Head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the ��Ī, said: “We are delighted that the important work by Cathryn and her team, funded by The Kennel Club Charitable Trust, can now continue through the Canine Genetics Centre at ��Ī Vet School. We look forward to working together for the health and welfare of our much loved canines.”

The Kennel Club and the canine genetics team will work together to ensure that the centre’s research targets conditions that have the greatest impact on the health of dogs. The Kennel Club’s breed health and conservation plans, a project that gathers all available health information and data about each breed, will play a vital role in guiding the centre’s objectives and areas of research.

During its time at the Animal Health Trust, The Kennel Club Canine Genetics Centre had a significant impact on the health of numerous breeds. Researchers at the centre developed 25 different DNA tests for canine inherited diseases that affect over 50 breeds. Research into the impact of some of these tests revealed that over a ten year period, thanks to uptake of these tests by responsible breeders, the frequency of disease-causing genetic variants in some breeds reduced by a staggering 90%.

Close collaboration with breed clubs and breeders is essential to the success of the centre, as is the collection of over 40,000 DNA samples that has been developed over the last 20 years. These samples, along with valuable scientific and DNA sequence data, have now been secured and transferred to the ��Ī for further analysis.

Dr Cathryn Mellersh, head of The Kennel Club Genetics Centre said: “The last ten years have been incredibly important to dog health and, thanks to the ��Ī, especially Professor James Wood for all his assistance in safeguarding our resources and The Kennel Club Charitable Trust, this work can now continue. Our work to support breeders in reducing health problems in dogs is essential and we are eager to continue this important work and are thankful to everyone for their support.”

Further information regarding The Kennel Club’s extensive work in the field of canine health and research can be found on The Kennel Club website.

Adapted from a press release by The Kennel Club.

Following the announcement in July 2020 of the closure of the Animal Health Trust, The Kennel Club Canine Genetics Centre will officially re-open and be located at the ��Ī where its vital research into dog genetics and inherited canine conditions can continue.

We look forward to working together for the health and welfare of our much loved canines.

James Wood

Syed Ahmad on Unsplash

Dog

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Tackling COVID-19: Professor James Wood

jg533 — Thu, 28 May 2020 08:15:12 +0000

This article is part of a series in which we speak to some of the many ��Ī researchers tackling COVID-19. For other articles about our latest COVID-19-related research, click here.

Before COVID-19, I split my time between my Vet School office and endless meetings in the central University and in London, including at Defra and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Now I’m based in my conservatory at home, which oscillates between freezing cold and too hot! I seem to have even more meetings now, by Webex, Zoom, Skype and Teams. Talking to people on the telephone is a great release from the two dimensional world many of us now live in.

I’m organising the Vet School’s research and policy responses to the epidemic, and working with colleagues in ��Ī Infectious Diseases, one of the University’s Interdisciplinary Research Centres, to do the same. I’m also supporting a total revision of the veterinary course examination and assessment - whilst trying to continue with my own multidisciplinary research in infection dynamics and disease control. And I’m providing a weekly hour-long ‘phone-an-expert’ service on the Jeremy Sallis Show on BBC Radio ��Īshire.

I study zoonotic diseases, which are infections that spread from animals to humans. My research is mostly based in sub-Saharan Africa and India. In Ethiopia and India I’ve been working on bovine tuberculosis, and in Ghana I’m studying viruses that come from bats - like COVID-19 probably did - in order to reduce the chances of spread to human populations.

There is an almost total lack of necessary health infrastructure in low and middle-income countries. This may result in massive mortality from COVID-19 in these places, and it is certainly likely to further emphasise health and wealth inequalities. I think this is a really major challenge in addressing the pandemic globally.

I suspect that the pandemic will further raise interest in zoonotic infections and help us to do more about them. We need far larger structural programmes to address the global challenges from these diseases. This has been a colossally neglected area. I hope that future epidemics like this can be averted through better preparation and policies based on scientific evidence. We’ve been saying this for the 15 years or so that we’ve been working on zoonotic bat viruses. Hopefully more people will listen now.

The ��Ī research community has stepped up to this challenge in so many ways. Vaccination work has been a focus of studies within the Veterinary School. Amazing amounts of PPE were provided to Addenbrooke’s Hospital from ��Ī’s science departments. A new rapid COVID-19 test came from a ��Ī spinout. Colleagues in the Department of Engineering have been working to improve access to ventilators, and infection researchers have been supporting laboratory setups across sub-Saharan Africa with support from the ��Ī-Africa programme.

There’s a huge ongoing contribution from ��Ī’s infectious diseases community. I’m Co-Chair of ��Ī Infectious Diseases, which has been supporting researchers with new COVID-19 research projects and establishing joint interdisciplinary seminar programmes across the University. We’ve also helped the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) develop its ‘��Ī on call’ programme, which connects selected ‘Policy Fellows’ to ��Ī experts for support in developing policy responses to the crisis. And we’re working with partners to produce guidelines, for many different bodies, to reduce the risk of pandemic spread through trade in live animals.

When this is over I’m looking forward to a holiday away from home with the family, and seeing my isolated mother. It would also be great to reinstate plans to bike across the Alps from Annecy to Nice with a friend, although I’m not quite sure how that’s all going to happen any time soon!

James Wood is Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science, and Head of Department of Veterinary Medicine. Listen to his overview of infectious disease modelling on ��Ī's Centre for Science and Policy podcast: Science, Policy & Pandemics Episode One.

How you can support ��Ī’s COVID-19 research

“��Ī’s infectious diseases community is making a huge contribution to tackling the pandemic,” says Professor James Wood. He leads several large-scale programmes at the University that rely on his research expertise: infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans. This is, he says, a research area that was ‘colossally neglected’ before COVID-19 emerged.

James Wood enjoying amazing freshly roasted Ethiopian coffee in a traditional coffee house in Sebeta, during a field trip prior to the COVID-19 pandemic

Yes

What’s your beef?

jg533 — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 13:53:04 +0000

While the carbon footprint of the meat industry may be clear, the proposition of eating less beef and lamb is fueling heated debate. If widespread change would be such a good thing, why can't – or won't – many people stop eating it?

Risk of Ebola outbreaks could be reduced by understanding how ecosystems influence human health

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 15:00:00 +0000

The model could help policymakers to decide where to target vaccine deployment, or develop healthcare infrastructure, to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks – illnesses that spread between animals and humans.

Analysis using the mathematical model, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that several countries in Africa, including Nigeria, could be at risk of Ebola outbreaks both presently and in the future, despite having experienced no known cases to date.

“It is vital that we understand the complexities causing animal-borne diseases to spill-over into humans, to accurately predict outbreaks and help save lives,” said Dr David Redding at UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment, first author of the study. “In our models, we’ve included more information about the animals that carry Ebola and, by doing so, we can better account for how changes in climate, land-use or human societies can affect human health.”

Designed by a team including researchers from UCL, ��Ī and Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the model captures the impact of climate, land use and human population factors on the risk of Ebola and predicts the known set of previous outbreaks with a high degree of accuracy, even in the absence of case data. The results show that Ebola outbreaks, resulting from spill-over events, are 1.6 times more likely in scenarios with increased warming and slower socioeconomic development.

Professor James Wood from ��Ī’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, who co-authored the study, said: “This work takes an unusually long-term approach to considering epidemic risk of Ebola, and identifies risks likely increasing across West as well as Central Africa. While there is always inherent uncertainty in specific predictions, the results suggest investment in primary health care across sub-Saharan Africa could have the most beneficial impact in reducing future risk.”

More than two thirds of all infectious diseases originate in animals, including Ebola, Lassa fever and West Nile virus. These diseases contribute to the global health and economic burden that disproportionately affects poor communities.

The latest Ebola epidemic has claimed more than 2,100 lives since August 2018 and while there are signs it is in retreat, the risk of spread is still high according to a recent report by the UN.

The World Bank estimates that the 2014 Ebola outbreak cost the three countries most affected many billions of dollars, due to infrastructure breakdown, mass migration, crop abandonment and a rise in endemic disease due to overrun healthcare systems, among other drivers.

The team used a first principles approach of how humans interact with wildlife and how Ebola spreads within human populations to develop the predictive framework, which could also be adapted for other zoonotic diseases.

“Importantly, our model is flexible enough to allow us to predict Ebola outbreaks in alternative, simulated versions of the world. For example, we examine a set of plausible future environments and show stark differences in how Ebola responds to the best-case and worst-case scenarios of future climate change and poverty alleviation,” explained co-author Professor Kate Jones at UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment and Institute of Zoology, ZSL.

The study was funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust.

Reference:
Redding, DW et al. 'Understanding the impact of environmental and socio-economic factors on emergence and epidemic potential of Ebola in Africa’, Nature Communications (2019), DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12499-6.

Adapted from a press release by UCL.

The next Ebola outbreak could be predicted using a new model that tracks how changes to ecosystems and human societies combine to affect the spread of the deadly infectious disease.

The results suggest investment in primary health care across sub-Saharan Africa could have the most beneficial impact in reducing future Ebola risk.

James Wood

UN Photo/Martine Perret

Ebola treatment centre, Nzérékoré, Guinea

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

�������������Ī - James Wood

Pork labelling schemes ‘not helpful’ in making informed buying choices, say researchers

TB vaccine may enable elimination of the disease in cattle by reducing its spread

Could bird flu spark the next pandemic - and are we prepared if it does?

New animal welfare scoring system could enable better-informed food and farming choices

The Kennel Club Genetics Centre to re-open as part of the �������������Ī

Tackling COVID-19: Professor James Wood

This article is part of a series in which we speak to some of the many �������������Ī researchers tackling COVID-19. For other articles about our latest COVID-19-related research, click here.

How you can support �������������Ī’s COVID-19 research

What’s your beef?

Risk of Ebola outbreaks could be reduced by understanding how ecosystems influence human health

��Ī - James Wood

The Kennel Club Genetics Centre to re-open as part of the ��Ī

This article is part of a series in which we speak to some of the many ��Ī researchers tackling COVID-19. For other articles about our latest COVID-19-related research, click here.

How you can support ��Ī’s COVID-19 research