A new vaccine for E.coli in cattle.

A brand new vaccine which is effective at controlling e.coli 0157 – the cattle disease which can prove fatal in humans – has been developed by a team of Scottish scientists. E.coli 0157 is endemic in around 20% of Scottish cattle herds at any one time but does not appear to have any impact on health or productivity of animals. However people who are infected through direct contact with cattle faeces or indirect contact with contaminated water, food or the environment, can suffer severe diarrhoea and in some cases fatal renal failure as a result of toxins the bacteria produce. After a decade of collaboration, staff at the Moredun Institute, the Roslin Institute and Scotland’s Rural College have developed the vaccine which is capable of controlling e.coli 0157 in cattle under experimental conditions. It remains to be seen how it will perform in the field where various strains of the disease may be present. The Moredun is now looking for commercial partners to exploit the vaccine but lead scientist, Tom McNeilly, acknowledges there will be debate over who should be responsible for paying for it.continue

Tech Start-up Designs Solar Tablet for Rural Mozambicans.

Mozambican technology start-up company Kamaleon, has designed a solar-powered mobile computer with touch screen displays and virtual keyboards built on a trailer to provide Internet access to remote areas. Internet access remains very low in Africa, especially in rural communities, inhibiting access to much-needed health education and counselling platforms for health organizations and schools.The Community Tablet is an innovative and engaging way that promotes digital literacy to solve these problems. The Community Tablet offers training on how to use the Internet and its features to community members and the local workforce; the technology and digital literacy contributing to greater effectiveness of civic education campaigns in various communities. It was first launched in Mozambique which has 24 million people without Internet access in November 2016 to support campaigns on various Health and Education initiatives in partnership with governmental and private organisations. It will spread up-to-date messages and interactive lessons that showcase symptoms, prevention and treatment options- replacing the need for leaflet distributions to convey life saving information.more

Dog price sky-rockets as Ekiti residents turn to dog meat .

Dogs have disappeared from the streets in Ekiti State following rise in the consumption of dog meat by residents, a check has shown. More people have increasingly turned to dog meat for their nutrition in spite of the taboo hitherto associated with the consumption of dog meat in the community. In Ado-Ekiti, Ikere-Ekiti, Ise-Ekiti, Emure- Ekiti, Ikole-Ekiti and Otun Ekiti new dog slaughter slabs have sprung up as the residents devour the meat in homes, restaurants and beer parlours. A resident said no fewer than 20 of such slaughter slabs exist in Ado Ekiti alone. “A good number of beer parlours and relaxation centres now make pepper soup and suya from dog meat. “Because of the high rate of consumption of dog meat, it is now difficult to see dogs on the street and their cost have risen astronomically,” the resident, who craved anonymity said. more

Vegan diet for poultry.

Everyone is turning to veggies to stay fit and healthy,the poultry sector just joined the league. Vegain™ product is the first vegan protein supplement developed specifically for poultry. It provides birds a nutritionally focused blend of vegan proteins and highly digestible amino acids, and works to fill the critical “nutrient potholes” that are commonly found in all-veggie diets. Vegain is a non-soy protein isolate made with a proprietary blend of all vegetable proteins – no whey or egg proteins used. In university research Vegain was proved to: 1)Boost profits by 8¢ per bird over traditional veggie diets 2)Provide highly digestible, all-natural amino acid compounds 3)The all-natural protein sources optimize growth, performance and feed conversion 4) Deliver significant body weight gain compared to the traditional veggie diets more

Faux meat: The protein of the future?

Faux meat: The protein of the future?: Faux meats like the Beyond Burger and other plant-based protein alternatives threaten growth of animal agriculture sectors.

Germany culls 77,000 poultry as bird flu found on farms.

Germany culling some 77,000 poultry as bird flu found on farms The culling of about 77,000 turkeys, chickens and ducks is underway after bird flu of the highly contagious H5N8 strain was found on farms in a major poultry production region in the north German state of Lower Saxony. On three farms where H5N8 was found and three others which had contact with them the culling of 55,000 birds was started over the Christmas weekend and should be completed on Tuesday, the Lower Saxony agriculture ministry said in a statement. The contagious H5N8 strain has been found in more than 500 wild birds in Germany in recent weeks. Outbreaks on farms have been rare after the government introduced tough sanitary rules to prevent infection by wild birds, including orders to keep poultry indoors in high-risk regions. Several European countries and Israel have found cases of H5N8 bird flu in the past few weeks and some ordered poultry flocks be kept indoors to prevent the disease spreading. France has widened high-risk restrictions to the entire country after the detection of several cases of the H5N8 strain. South Korea has mobilized its armed forces to help in its biggest-ever poultry cull as the spread of a highly contagious strain bird flu continued, with another 1.6 million birds ordered to be destroyed in affected areas. more

Genetics,environment and 2-faced births in animals.

A calf with four eyes, two noses and two mouths. Her middle two eyes share a socket. The calf dubbed lucky by owner is believed to be a blessing and the family is doing all to make lucky comfortable. Two-faced births don’t happen only to cattle,as seen in the case of Frank and Louie (also known as FrankenLouie) which was what is called a diprosopus or craniofacial duplication, also known as being a “Janus cat” — a two-faced cat. Janus was a Greek god with two faces, because he was considered to look both to the future and the past. Most Janus cats don’t survive for long. But Frank and Louie lived for 15 years. The Massachusetts cat behaved more like a dog than a cat, according to its owner, and walked on a leash and loved car rides. Darrh Bullock, an extension professor in the department of animal and food sciences at the University of Kentucky, said that calves like Lucky are “extremely rare. He said that Lucky’s two heads are not necessarily a genetic effect, but could have been caused by environmental influences such as hormonal imbalances or some sort of chemical that happened to get into the mother during the developmental stage of the fetus. The 2 headed calf is a result of splitting of the embryo that just doesn’t go very far,as fully splitting the embryo would wind up as identical twins. Jonathan Beever, a professor of genetics, genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Illinois, recently worked on a project, primarily with Angus cattle, on “developmental duplications.” Such duplications appear to be an inherited recessive genetic condition. Beever said a calf in Iowa was born with two heads and lived 16-18 months until it was sent to market.“Even with that condition he was viable,” Beever said. “There are 25,000 different genes that control how an animal develops,” Beever said. “When one of them gets disrupted, that allows things to happen that aren’t normally supposed to happen.” Beever said that Lucky is probably not one of those mutations, “but it gives us insight that something happened during that developmental time period, probably day 18 to 25, during pregnancy and the body decided to develop like that.” excerpts http://www.heraldonline.com/