News Overview

The Tropical Chicken Genetics Solutions (TPGS) initiative and their partners held a two-day workshop on 7–8 July 2022 at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia to document lessons from the program and explore opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of complementary chicken-based interventions. The workshop also proposed business models for improving the performance of chicken value chains. TPGS is a genetics innovation strategy

On 9 August 2022, Delia Grace received the Peter Ellis award for exceptional contributions to veterinary epidemiology during the 22nd International Symposium of Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics (ISVEE), held in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Delia Grace is professor of food safety systems at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich and joint-appointed scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute. The Peter

CGIAR’s SAPLING Initiative targets Uganda’s pig and cattle sectors to expand benefits for farmers Uganda stakeholder workshop Juliet Sentumbwe, director of animal resources at MAAIF, commended ILRI’s pig value chain work in Uganda over the past 10 years. She said the research ‘has been instrumental in raising the profile of the pig sector and pig farming is now recognized as

According to the Uganda Dairy Development Authority, annual milk production in the country increased from 2.08 billion to 2.5 billion litres between 2015 and 2017-18. But further improvement in milk productivity since then has been hampered by inconsistent supply of nutritious forages between the wet and dry seasons. During the wet seasons, dairy farmers have surplus forage feeds, often resulting

Experts in India met at a recent regional workshop held on 8 July 2022 in Assam to design a comprehensive African swine fever management plan in response to the negative impacts of the disease on the livelihoods of millions of farmers in the northeast of the country. The workshop was co-hosted by the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Department, the Assam

The rapid transformation of food systems is creating unintentional infectious disease risks that will need to be addressed through effective coordination between agricultural and public health sectors, a new review study says. The review, published in Lancet Planetary Health (Sept 2022), explored how intensification of agricultural production and increasing complexity of food supply chains, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries,

Pastoralist communities in northern Kenya are among the most neglected people in the country, suffering the highest levels of food insecurity and poverty. This is partly because the nomadic herding of livestock was until recently considered an outdated and unproductive way of life. But equally importantly, a lack of accurate information makes it hard to formulate the policies needed to improve livelihoods and

Healthy and productive small ruminants play a key role in supporting women’s empowerment in low- and middle-income countries. This is because small ruminants (sheep and goats) are more likely to be owned and controlled by women and have been shown to support women’s livelihoods, their empowerment and their households’ nutritional status outcomes. Animal vaccines, among other animal health services, are