Kenyan bioinformatics student awarded fellowship for Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program

George Tinega, a Kenyan bioinformatics and molecular biology graduate student at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, has been selected as a 2013 Fellow for the Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program (LEAP) of the Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellows Program.

The Borlaug LEAP Fellowship honours Nobel Laureate Norman E. Borlaug who has been hailed as the father of the Green Revolution.

The fellowship supports engaging a mentor at a United States university and at a CGIAR centre to support and enhance the thesis research and mentoring experience.

The Borlaug LEAP Fellowship is awarded to only a few outstanding graduate students from developing countries who show strong scientific and leadership potential, have a well-coordinated proposal between their home university, a United States university mentor and the CGIAR mentor, and whose research is related to a strong research and support project within the host country.

Tinega’s research project, “Molecular characterization of Salmonella isolates obtained from Wambizzi pig abattoir in Kampala, Uganda”, will use DNA-related techniques to identify Salmonella strains isolated from pork products and assess the usefulness of these techniques in epidemiological analysis and control of this important food-borne pathogen.

The use of more accurate methods for detecting Salmonella in pigs and pork products can improve the management of salmonellosis, especially during emergencies.

This has potential to contribute towards reducing the public health risks associated with the pig value chain in Uganda where smallholder pig production is gaining popularity to meet the rising consumer demand for pork in urban areas.

The research is being done through the Safe Food, Fair Food project under the lead supervision of Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety specialist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The first phase of the project – preliminary laboratory analysis of food samples at Makerere University, Uganda – has already been completed.

From April to July 2013, Tinega will work with scientists at the Biosciences eastern and central Africa hub at ILRI to use DNA-related techniques such as multilocus sequence type analysis to characterize the Salmonella isolates.

He then proceeds to the University of Texas Medical School at Houston until 31 December 2013 for further training and research in molecular technologies, genomics, bioinformatics and biosafety under the mentorship of Barbara E. Murray.

“I’m grateful for this leadership and training opportunity at the Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Texas Medical School as it provides a platform to carry out state-of-the-art biomedical, bioinformatics and genomics research,” said Tinega.

“This is also a useful opportunity to foster research collaboration and knowledge exchange between my home university and the University of Texas Medical School for mutual benefit.”

“I plan to further my career development towards a PhD so that I may use my enhanced research skills to contribute towards the socio-economic development of my country,” Tinega added.

Tinega holds a Bachelor of Biological Sciences degree from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

 

Ethiopia small ruminant value chain assessment: First results assessed

Reblogged from CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish:

Stakeholder discussions and planning for the Livestock and Fish small ruminant value chain development project began in mid-2012. By November, sites were selected and teams were trained to carry out rapid value chain assessments in the project's 7 research sites (including for the safe food fair food project).

Field implementation of the rapid value chain assessment ran through December 2012 and January 2013 with mixed CGIAR-national teams collecting data in Atsbi, Doyogena, Menz, Horro, Abergelle, Yabello and Shinelle districts (

Read more… 300 more words

 

Safety of Egyptian farmed tilapia under scrutiny

A recent analysis showed that the aquaculture value chain in Egypt is mainly based on the production of tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and mullet (Mugil cephalus and Liza ramada). The value chain was found to be short with no post-harvest processing (Macfadyen et al. 2011). However, there is a wide spread perception among poor and rich consumers, authorities and even technical staff that farmed fish contains high level of pollutants such as cancer-causing heavy metals, pesticides or hormones.

In October 2012, WorldFish facilitated a 2-week mission trip to Egypt for four scientists in the Safe Food, Fair Food (SFFF) project from West Africa and with expertise on fish safety who had been trained in participatory risk analysis. During the mission, tools were developed and tested to assess the safety of farmed tilapia. These drafts were later expanded and refined into a generic toolkit by the International Livestock Research Institute in collaboration with the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) and are currently applied in selected animal value chains: Egypt (fish), Ethiopia (small ruminants), Tanzania (dairy), Uganda and Vietnam (pigs).

Preliminary results from a very small (convenient) sample of tilapia collected during that initial study suggest that the levels of chemical hazards are rather small – which is of course good news for the industry! These positive findings will hopefully soon be confirmed by the results from a larger and representative sample which is currently being examined and complemented by microbiological analysis.

The collection of qualitative data is coming to an end in the project countries and reflection on the tools as well as discussions on how to analyze and present the data in a harmonized way across value chains is underway. The preliminary findings in Egypt, potential areas of further collaboration and possible research questions were discussed during a follow up mission by SFFF principal investigator, Delia Grace, and project coordinator, Kristina Rösel from February 10-14^th 2013. Colleagues from WorldFish, Dr Malcolm Dickson, Dr Ahmed Nassr-Allah and Dr Diaa Kenawy, along with Dr Mahmoud Eltholth, collaborator at Kafr El Sheikh University and RVC carried out visits to a range of locations in Kafr el Sheikh Governorate, the center of Egyptian farmed fish production, including the wholesale market, a fish farm and the University of Kafr El Sheikh.

Top left: Auction of fresh fish at wholesale market in Kafr El Sheik (photo credits: Mahmoud Eltholth); Top right: mission participants look at a map showing the distribution of fish farms in Northern Egypt (photo credits: Malcolm Dickson); Bottom: Improved strain of farmed tilapia (left) and grey mullet (right) (photo credits: Malcolm Dickson)

The reflection workshop in Cairo revealed a lot of potential research questions! One of them could address the safety of grey mullet eaten as fesikh during the festival of Sham el-Nessim. The ancient Egyptians celebrated a date in spring when day and night become equal in length, which represented the beginning of creation. When Christianity arrived in Egypt, this day was linked with Coptic Easter, falling immediately on Easter Monday.

Dr. Hussan Mohamed, professor of pharaonic history at Ain Shams University, explained to a local daily newspaper that “the best fesikh is made of grey mullet fish from either Bardawil Lake, or from Kafr al-Sheikh Governorate, and then left out in containers until distended. When it is sufficiently putrefied, salt is added and the fish are left to pickle for at least 40 days. United under a set menu of highly aromatic food, Muslims and Christians, rich and poor, all eat fesikh, along with scallions, lettuce, Lupini Beans and colored boiled eggs.”

Despite annual warnings by health officials against the dangers of fesikh and reports of tons of contaminated fish discovered in the markets, most Egyptians insist that fesikh is irreplaceable for Sham al-Nessim.

Story by Kristina Rösel

 

1st African Regional Conference of the International Association on Ecology and Health

Don’t miss the first-ever joint conference dedicated to improve public health and ecology from 1 to 5 October 2013 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire!

It is co-organized by Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS), Safe Food, Fair Food project partner in West Africa.

The objective of this meeting is to contribute to the diffusion and sharing of knowledge between researchers, health practitioners and policy makers on integrated and transdisplinary studies that are related to health within the framework of adaptations to global changes.

The conference focuses on three main themes with each having sub themes:

1. Global changes: causes and consequences on health
2. Adaptation and change of behaviour: approaches such as Ecohealth, OneHealth, others
3. From research to action: relationship between researchers and policy makers through participation, mutual learning, communication and capacity building, institutional analysis

The call for abstracts is open until April 13, 2013. Find more details on the conference website:

More recent conference and scholarship announcements here…

 

International workshop to discuss an integrated approach to controlling brucellosis in Africa

Reblogged from AgHealth:

Brucellosis, also referred to as undulant fever, is a highly contagious zoonotic disease caused by the microorganism Brucella which infects multiple animal species including cattle, sheep, pigs, small ruminants, camels, water buffaloes and yaks.

Brucellosis affects both humans and animals, causing chronic fever and joint and muscle pain in humans and abortion in animals.

Cases of brucellosis in humans are often linked to consumption of unpasteurized milk and soft cheese made from the milk of infected cows.

Read more… 210 more words

Delia Grace as the Safe Food, Fair Food project PI and Bassirou Bonfoh, Director of the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire and coordinator of Safe Food, Fair Food in West Africa were among the participants.

 

Safe Food, Fair Food project communication now available in English, French and Portuguese

During our writeshop in November 2012, some of the outputs we finalized were a poster (see below) and a factsheet for a wider dissemination of our project goals and achievements. We took advantage of the linguistic diversity of our group’s participants and the factsheet was translated in Portuguese and French to address the non-Anglophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The brochures have now been published by the International Livestock Research Institute.

• ENGLISH: Safe food, fair food (drafted by Kristina Rösel, finalized by all writeshop participants)

• FRANÇAIS: Aliments sains, aliments équitables (translated by Bassirou Bonfoh, Sylvain G. Traoré and Mireille Sylvie Kouamé-Sina at Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire/ Safe Food, Fair Food West Africa)

• PORTUGUÊS: Alimentos seguros, alimentos equitáveis (translated by Helena Matusse and Saskia Hendrickx/ Safe Food, Fair Food Southern Africa)

You are invited to display our poster and circulate the factsheet to colleagues, students and interested parties.

See more project reports and outputs

 

Launch of food safety and nutrition assessment in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam

Food is one of the most important aspects of life and culture and unsurprisingly there are many beliefs, proverbs and taboos about growing, preparing and eating food. In parts of South Africa young boys should not be given kidneys to eat. In parts of East Africa, children should not be given eggs because it will make them bald like an egg. In parts of West Africa, children are considered pure and are given raw milk to purify the person who gives milk. In Vietnam women eat pork legs as they believe that this make them have more milk to breastfeed their child but some people believe you shouldn’t turn the fish over while you are eating it, because it is bad luck and means the boat may turn over when it goes fishing.

Animal source foods are excellent sources of nutrition and also a major cause of disease. In order to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks we need to understand:

• Among the wide range of hazards in animal source food products in informal systems, which are likely to have the greatest risks to human health?
• Which risks have the most impact in terms of limiting the availability of food which is critical to the nutritional security of the poor?
• What are the key constraints to supply and demand of safe and nutritious foods?
• How do these constraints influence the development of the value chain, particularly livelihood opportunities of the poor who produce or handle those products?
• What are potential health and nutritional benefits of research that seeks to overcome these risks and constraints?

The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish (CRP L&F) has identified 9 value chains of great importance to smallholders and poor people. The CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (CRP A4NH) is focusing on nutrition and food safety aspects of these important animal source value chains. This requires new tools and approaches to prioritize trade-offs between income, employment, disease risks and nutritional benefits. These are particularly diverse in informal markets in developing countries but yet provide for the livelihoods of millions.

In the past months since June 2012, guidelines have been developed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) for a rapid integrated assessment of food safety risks and nutritional benefits for a range of ASF value chains. These build on emerging research on participatory risk assessment and assessment tools for value chains, bringing together public health, value chain, and impact assessment experts to undertake the rapid assessment and develop appropriate methods and approaches for survey design, data collection and analysis. The work has been funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

Testing of the tools with sheep farmers around Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (photo credits: Tamsin Dewé)

These tools will now be applied and validated in the field along with on-going value chains assessments led by ILRI. Several projects under CRP A4NH formed synergies to join forces in data collection. They are funded by ACIAR (PigRisk Vietnam) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, BMZ/GIZ (Safe Food, Fair Food). The project brings together scientists from RVC in London, Kafr-El-Sheikh University, WorldFish in Egypt, Hanoi School of Public Health and Hanoi Agriculture University in Vietnam as well as the International Food Policy Research Centre (IFPRI), the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and ILRI together with partners in the Safe Food, Fair Food (SFFF) project from throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

In the past weeks, and in collaboration with ILRI’s national partners, teams of enumerators have been trained in

• Egypt (with partners from WorldFish, RVC and SFFF)
• Ethiopia (with partners from Addis Ababa University, ICARDA and SFFF)
• Tanzania (with Sokoine University of Agriculture, RVC and SFFF)
• Uganda (with the smallholder pig value chain development project and SFFF)
• Vietnam (with partners from Hanoi School of Public Health and Hanoi Agriculture University)

The results of the risk assessments and management recommendations will feed directly into the CRP L&F value chain development intervention packages.

Read more about the launches in Egypt (by Kennedy Bomfeh and Malcolm Dickson), in Ethiopia (by Tamsin Dewé), in Tanzania (by Kimberly Fornace and Mahmoud Eltholth), in Uganda (by Danilo Pezo) and in Vietnam (by Delia Grace and Hung Nguyen).