Bees are one of our planet's most important animals. They produce honey and they are the primary managed pollinators for a majority of high value specialty crops grown in the contiguous states of California and Oregon, such as nuts, stone fruits, vegetables, and berries. A problem looms for our animal friends, the bees. Colony losses are high due to a variety of environmental and biological causes including bacterial diseases.
Dr. Rodrigo Gallardo may be a poultry medicine specialist who helps improve the wellbeing of chickens through research and education, but he also sees the far-reaching impact of his role. “By helping villages in other parts of the world maintain healthier poultry flocks, we’re assisting communities as a whole,” Gallardo explained. “If families can increase egg and meat production in their chickens because they are healthier, they have more financial resources to spend on health care and sending their children to school.”
Raising backyard chickens has become a fun hobby for many urban dwellers in the San Joaquin Valley, but a devastating poultry disease currently raging in Southern California could put those birds and others in jeopardy.
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.
