Detecting Disease

New report indicates U.S. needs faster, more efficient tools to screen livestock, milk and other agricultural products for highly contagious diseases.

The National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense (FAZD Center) in mid-February released a new report that identifies the screening tools the United States will need to more quickly and efficiently detect highly contagious diseases in its livestock, milk and other agricultural products.

The report resulted from the Agricultural Screening Tools Workshop conducted in November 2010 in Washington, D.C. The FAZD Center and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sponsored the workshop, which attracted 40 representatives from DHS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), major research universities, animal disease diagnostic laboratories, and agricultural industry associations. Among these representatives were some of the nation's leading diagnostic experts in foreign animal and emerging diseases.

Entitled "Protecting Agricultural Infrastructure: Defining the Needs and Requirements for Agricultural Screening Tools," the report is available online at http://bit.ly/AGSTreport.

Tammy Beckham, director of the FAZD Center, said the ability to screen the nation's agricultural products for infectious diseases — while preserving the ability of agricultural industries to maintain business continuity — remains among the major challenges for homeland security research. "This report is an important step," Beckham said. "Our next task is to develop practical but effective tools that meet the needs identified in the report."

The FAZD Center focuses on research, education and outreach to prevent, detect, mitigate and recover from high consequence animal diseases — foreign, emerging or zoonotic (those transmissible between animals and humans) — that may be introduced naturally or intentionally.

Participants in the workshop included molecular diagnosticians, veterinary epidemiologists, veterinary medical professionals, veterinary emergency management, state animal health officials, and representatives from the agricultural industry.

Workshop organizers asked these experts to limit their discussion to tools that screen for the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease, which ranks among the most devastating diseases for livestock production.

"We wanted to bring focus to the discussion," Beckham said. "Our assumption is that this report's findings will guide future discussions about screening tools for other high-priority diseases."

In addition, the experts were asked to emphasize technologies that will minimize the disruption of daily business practices. They also were asked to give priority to technologies that will improve national security as well as industry resiliency and continuity.

Among the findings in the report, the experts concluded that the United States should:

• enhance current diagnostic tests to include a wider range of samples, species and diseases;

• establish procedures to pool multiple sample types;

• improve diagnostic tests to more rapidly and accurately identify animals that are free of disease;

• create tests that more quickly differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals; and

• invest in detection tests that will deliver on-site results at the farm or ranch with greater speed and accuracy.

Editor's Note: This article was provided as a news release by the FAZD Center.

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