11.14.2006

By Robert Alphin

Poultry Research Coordinator
University of Delaware

It is essential for the international community to endeavor to monitor and control the spread of avian influenza and to strive to eradicate the disease wherever possible.
Recently the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service’s office awarded a $424,000 grant to the University of Delaware’s Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Center for International Studies, and Delaware Technical and Community College to provide training and technical assistance to Romania on controlling avian influenza.
The focus of the grant is to coordinate efforts among governmental agencies, universities and the commercial poultry industry in Romania to improve surveillance, biosecurity and control measures drawing upon the extensive avian influenza experience and expertise of this Delaware higher education partnership.
This effort will include increasing the efficiency of Romania’s national agricultural laboratories and to enhance biosecurity and control protocols in commercial poultry operations while building a sustainable partnership between Delaware and Romania.
This grant will operate under the auspices of UD’s new Avian Biosciences Center in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Jack Gelb Jr., an avian virologist with experience in avian influenza, is the center’s director.
The center utilizes experts in avian health, avian genomics, environmental compatibility and food safety and quality, working in UD’s Allen Laboratory and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute in Newark, Del., and the Lasher Laboratory and the Elbert N. and Ann V. Carvel Research and Education Center in Georgetown, Del.
Carla Stone, who is an international education partnership specialist, in the Office of the President at Delaware Tech, and George Irvine, program specialist, at UD’s Center for International Studies, will coordinate and manage the project.
Stone has been in Romania several times this summer and fall getting the project up and running. The first group of Romanian scientists and government officials will be visiting Delaware in mid November. Delaware scientists and officials will be traveling to Romania in January.
Romania has been hard hit in the last 12 months by a series of avian flu outbreaks in wild and domestic birds infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus. The outbreaks started in the Danube River delta last October and a second wave of avian flu in May resulted in the culling of more than a million poultry.
The majority of the birds belonged to commercial farms, but more than 200,000 birds belonged to more than 14,000 households in the Romanian countryside.
The Delaware partnership’s main objective is to improve Romania’s ability to deal with avian influenza by exposing Romanians to the “Delaware model,” which emphasizes close cooperation between government, industry and educational institutions through effective communication and high levels of trust to deliver research and public policy solutions to manage avian influenza outbreaks.
The “Delaware model” is based on the experience gained in confronting and controlling the avian influenza outbreak in Delaware in 2004. The H7N2 strain of avian influenza that infected three farms in Delmarva was quickly diagnosed and contained. This combined with field observations, and communication, cooperation and collaboration among industry, academia, and the government successfully limited this outbreak to just three farms.
The Delmarva International Poultry Partnership (DIPP) will also provide technical assistance. The DIPP was created in 2005 by the UD and Delaware Tech to provide critical avian disease prevention and production expertise to the international efforts to control avian influenza and includes participants from the Delmarva poultry companies, Delaware’s Department of Agriculture and other public and private sector partners.
As part of DIPP’s effort, a Research Fellowship program is being offered and is designed to allow two senior post-doc or professor-level avian scientists from Romania to spend three months as visiting researchers, to study best practices in avian influenza research, diagnosis, laboratory management and extension practices.
The fellowships will allow the Romanian researchers to work with professors and researchers from the UD’s Avian Biosciences Center and from Delaware Tech. One fellowship is designed for a Romanian avian scientist interested in studying the interaction between basic and applied avian influenza research.
Specific areas to investigate while in Delaware include UD’s leading avian influenza research and extension program and best biosecurity, depopulation and composting practices for commercial poultry operations.
The other fellowship is designed for a Romanian avian scientist interested in studying the various ways research scientists diagnose and characterize avian influenza in the lab. Specific areas to investigate while in Delaware include the equipment, management and training practices used in UD’s and Delaware Tech’s animal science laboratories, continuous testing of commercial flocks prior to shipment to market, and the close cooperation between government, industry and academia to assure that poultry is AI-free.