Food & Agriculture

The Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance (CADMS) led by Dr. Beatriz Martínez López was formally recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations as an FAO Reference Center for Veterinary Epidemiology in May 2018.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in livestock can be devastating—not only to the animals affected and those who own them, but to the agricultural economies of impacted countries. To prevent a similar situation from happening in this country, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in conjunction with several state departments of agriculture and the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) led a 3-day foot-and-mouth simulation exercise.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has identified a case of Virulent Newcastle Disease (VND) in a small flock of backyard exhibition chickens in Los Angeles County. The case was detected at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s California Animal Health & Food Safety Laboratory (CAHFS).

CDC officials, along with the FDA, are still searching for the source of E. coli-contaminated romaine lettuce, which has sickened 84 people across 19 states over the past two weeks. But in reality, we should probably be a little wary of lettuce all the time — not just when there’s a big E. coli outbreak.