TEXAS VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

COLLEGE STATION, Jan. 28, 2011 – The first-ever Veterinary Legislative Day will be held Tuesday (Feb. 1) in the State Capitol Building in Austin. A contingent of faculty, staff and students from Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences will be on hand to brief Texas legislators on the impact of veterinary medicine on Texas and propose ways to improve and enhance veterinary education in the state.

The observance is being conducted in collaboration with the Texas Veterinary Medical Association.

Established in 1916, the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences is the state’s only veterinary medicine school and one of the largest in North America. It is consistently rated among the best veterinary medicine schools in the country, and most of its educational and teaching programs place among the top five in national rankings.

Veterinary Legislative Day events in Austin will coincide with events held globally as 2011 has been designated as the “Year of the Veterinarian,” and a celebration will be held Feb. 4 at the Hagler Center on the Texas A&M campus. Veterinary medicine as a profession was born 250 years ago in Lyon, France.

“The World Veterinary Association has designated 2011 as the ‘Year of the Veterinarian’ and it is encouraging the advancement of the education of veterinarians and sharing knowledge so that we can raise the bar for veterinary medicine throughout the world,” says Leon Russell, professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.

Proclamations are expected to be read on the House and Senate floors beginning at 10 a.m. Lawmakers in Austin will hear from Texas A&M representatives about the importance of veterinary medicine on the state’s economy, noting that the profession exerts a $1.7 billion economic impact on the state. Currently, Texas is the leading cattle- and horse-producing state.

In recent years, veterinary medicine has branched into numerous other fields, such as homeland security, food safety, infectious diseases, environmental and biodiversity and other areas critical to the American people, officials note. About three-fourths of the diseases that have emerged in the last 20 years are zoonotic, meaning they can be transmitted from animals to humans, and diseases such as HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) are believed to have originated in wild animals and eventually transmitted to humans.

Texas A&M officials note that veterinary medicine in Texas faces many challenges. Texas cattle raisers are often hampered by the shortage of rural veterinarians, and officials note that among the 10 most populated states, Texas ranks last in veterinarians per million food and fiber animals.

Additionally, there has been no significant increase in federal funding for veterinary education in the last 30 years, they note. At Texas A&M, there has been no increase in tuition in the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences in the last 10 years, and many facilities at the college are needing a substantial upgrade, they add. For example, the school’s Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital and the Veterinary Medical Sciences Building were both built more than 50 years ago.

Texas A&M recently created the Veterinary Emergency Response Team that has mobile units to respond to disaster situations throughout the state. It will work closely with the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory, TexasAgriLife, the Texas Animal Health Commission, the Texas Veterinary Medical Association, the Texas Department of Emergency Management and other agencies.

Russell notes that veterinarians today play a more vital role than ever before.

“Veterinarians provide a public oversight in many food industries, such as beef, pork and poultry, and they promote food security by supervising animal production hygiene,” he explains.

“Many of the faculty here have international reputations for their expertise in reproductive biology, cancer, biodefense, infectious diseases, equine and feline medicine, cardiology and many other areas. In addition, the U.S. military relies on veterinarians to monitor the quality and safety of the food that our troops consume and also to provide a safe food supply for our government personnel all over the world.

“The world has never needed veterinarians more than it does today.”

For more information about world veterinary events, go to http://www.vet2011.org/.

For more information about Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, go to http://www.vetmed.tamu.edu/.

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Texas discovers new cattle brucellosis infected herd | Cattle Network

Texas discovers new cattle brucellosis infected herd | Cattle Network: "Austin –For the first time in over five years, a cattle herd in Texas has been diagnosed with bovine brucellosis (Bangs disease). According to Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) officials, a small beef herd in South Texas (Starr County) has been determined to be infected. Brucellosis is a bacterial disease of cattle that can cause abortions, weak calves and low milk production. Humans can also catch brucellosis (undulant fever), most commonly by consuming unpasteurized milk products, or handling contaminated birthing material when assisting with difficult calving situations in infected cows."

Conference on Cattle Feeding

Conference on Cattle Feeding: "US - The future of Midwest cattle feeding will be discussed at the 2011 Cattle Feeders Day on February at the DeKalb County Farm Bureau in Sycamore, Illinois.

This seminar, sponsored by Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), the Illinois Beef Association (IBA), and the University of Illinois Extension, will highlight new cattle feeding strategies, feedstuff availability in the future, and new research on feedlot feed efficiency."

Foot-and-Mouth Disease in South Korea Signals Regional Risk

Foot-and-Mouth Disease in South Korea Signals Regional Risk: "FMD is a highly contagious disease affecting cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, swine and other cloven-hoofed animals. It causes blisters on the nose, mouth and hooves and can kill young or weak animals. There are several types of FMD viruses. The type causing the outbreak in South Korea is Type O."

Foot-and-Mouth Disease in South Korea Signals Regional Risk

Foot-and-Mouth Disease in South Korea Signals Regional Risk: "Foot-and-Mouth Disease in South Korea Signals Regional Risk

ASIA - FAO is calling for veterinary and border control authorities in Asia to be on alert for animals showing signs of infection by Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD), following an unprecedented outbreak of the livestock-affecting sickness in South Korea."

Nigerian Observer Online Edition

Nigerian Observer Online Edition: "ABUJA - To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of veterinary profession and veterinary science, the UN has declared 2011 World Veterinary Year, a statement from the FAO has said.

The statement said that King Louis XV of France in 1761 had proposed that a veterinary school be founded in Lyon, due to the scourge of cattle disease at the time.

This year also marks the 300th anniversary of the development of the first measures designed to fight bovine diseases."

in FLIGHT MARRIAGE

CURRENT TRENDS IN LAMENESS MGT

MANHATTAN - At any given time between 10 and 20 percent of cattle in the United States are afflicted with lameness, making it one of the most common ailments affecting feedlot and stocker calves. That's why a Kansas State University research team is working to reduce the percentage of cattle affected by bovine lameness. Three researchers - David Anderson, professor of clinical sciences; Brad White, associate professor of clinical sciences; and Johann Coetzee, associate professor of clinical sciences - are involved with bovine pain and welfare assessment at K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine. Because of their efforts to understand and treat lameness in cattle, they are becoming leaders in this critically important bovine research. "K-State is one of the few universities in the country with a farm animal surgery program," Anderson said. "Because of the research we're doing here, we're getting national and international attention about these programs." The team is developing a model to assess lameness and identify possible ways to treat it. Lameness can be excruciatingly painful for cattle and is caused by a variety of factors, including nutrition, environment and infectious organisms, Anderson said. When damage to the hoof and sole results in ulcers, abscesses or infection of the deep tissue of the foot, it causes severe pain during weight bearing. The goal of their research is to identify risk factors for the prevention of lameness, validate tools for early detection, develop recommendations for effective treatment, and ultimately improve the health and welfare of cattle. Each researcher is focusing on a different area of the project. Anderson is working on pressure map technology, which is a way of measuring the weight bearing and method of stride. White is working on accelerometry, which involves using monitors to measure the behavioral responses of animals. White can monitor an animal for 24 hours to determine how much time it spends lying down, moving around or standing still. Coetzee, a pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic specialist, is working to analyze indicators of pain in the blood and analyzing drugs to determine the dosage to reduce pain. So far the researchers have developed ways to assess lameness. They are now looking at therapeutic models and identifying drugs - such as flunixin and meloxicam - that could help ameliorate pain and lameness. The researchers recently published work on sodium salicylate in the Journal of Dairy Science and will have an upcoming article about flunixin in the American Journal of Veterinary Research, expected sometime in 2011. Anderson spoke at the 2010 World Buiatrics Congress in Santiago, Chile, about farm animal surgery and has been invited to speak at the 2012 World Buiatrics Congress in Portugal.

200 dead cows found on town of Stockton farm | wisconsinrapidstribune.com | Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune

200 dead cows found on town of Stockton farm | wisconsinrapidstribune.com | Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune: "According to a Portage County Sheriff's Department news release, deputies were dispatched to the town just after 1 p.m. Friday after they were notified of numerous dead cows lying in a field in the 8000 block of Fourth Avenue.

The owner of the cattle allegedly told deputies that he had been working with a local veterinarian and suspected that the animals died from the either the IBR or BVD virus."

Veterinary Record - 22 January 2011; Vol. 168, No. 3 | World Veterinary Association

Veterinary Record - 22 January 2011; Vol. 168, No. 3 | World Veterinary Association: "Bovine neonatal pancytopenia, and anaemia in lambs caused by feeding cow colostrum
Agnes Winter"

S Korea Considers More Active Use of FMD Vaccines

S Korea Considers More Active Use of FMD Vaccines: "SOUTH KOREA - The Farm Minister has announced that the country's policy on FMD vaccination is to be reconsidered.
South Korea plans to revamp its national foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) quarantine regime so vaccinations can be employed more aggressively to cope with future outbreaks, a senior policymaker said yesterday (18 January).

Yonhap reports Farm Minister, Yoo Jeong-bok, saying in a news briefing that the most severe outbreaks of FMD in the country's history, which has effectively spread throughout the country, required a 'rethinking' of the government's quarantine guidelines."

ELEPHANTS

African forest-dwelling elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are a separate species from those living in the African savanna (Loxodonta africana), researchers have shown.

Scientists have long debated whether African elephants belong to the same or different species. They look very different, with the savanna elephant weighing around 7 tonnes — roughly double the weight of the forest elephant. But studies had suggested they were the same species — DNA in mitochondria (the cell's energy factories) from African elephants found evidence of interbreeding between forest and savanna elephants around 500,000 years ago. Now a group of scientists have taken a deeper look at the African elephants' genetic ancestry.

The researchers sequenced the nuclear genomes of both types of African elephant, as well as that of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). They also extracted and sequenced DNA from the extinct woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and mastodon (Mammut americanum) — ancient elephant ancestors.

By comparing all these genomes, the team found that the forest and savanna elephants diverged into separate species between 2.6 and 5.6 million years ago.

The study is published online in the journal Plos Biology.

FVE

Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE) Express Support for One Health

Source:

On January 11, 2011, the prominent Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE) expressed their support for One Health to the One Health Initiative website team from their Executive Director, Dr. Jan Vaarten via Francesco Proscia, MSc, Veterinary Policy Officer from Brussels, Belgium in the following message:

“ … Subject: request to be added on The “One Health/One Medicine” Supporter List

It is my pleasure to let you know that the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE), would like to be added to “One Health/One Medicine” Supporters List.

The FVE was founded in 1975 and it represents 46 national veterinary organizations across 38 European countries and 4 international Sections, each of which represents key groups within the veterinary profession:

Practitioners (UEVP), Hygienists (UEVH), Veterinary State Officers (EASVO) and Veterinarians in Education, Research and Industry (EVERI). Our task is to unite and represent the whole veterinary profession, across Europe. Our aim is to create the right conditions for the veterinary profession to carry out the tasks society has conferred on us: to care for animal health, animal welfare and veterinary public health. We strive to ensure that our role and contribution is known, understood and valued by everyone, including the general public through to European Institutions, global organizations but also from the farmers associations and individual animal owners. For further information, please visit

In light of our tasks and strategy, the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe would like to ask you considering adding FVE in the "One Health/One Medicine" supporters list.

World Veterinary Day 2010 | World Veterinary Association

World Veterinary Day 2010 | World Veterinary Association: "World Veterinary Day 2010
Veterinary Day 2010
Saturday, 24th April, 2010

World Veterinary Day 2009 || World Veterinary Day 2008 || World Veterinary Day 2007 || World Veterinary Day 2006 || World Veterinary Day 2005 || World Veterinary Day 2004

WVA Letter to Vets
How to Get Into the Media
Sample Media Statement"

HENCE 2011 World Veterinary Year-every last saturday of april.Vet for health,

Vet for food,

Vet for the planet/

CANCER

"In most cancers, a handful of mutations are accumulated over time, gradually evolving into a more aggressive form," said Peter Campbell, blood oncologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and lead author of the study. But in some situations, he adds, cancer can come out of nowhere, leaving its victim little time for treatment. 

"What is particularly exciting about this observation is that it points to a novel mechanism that affects the stability of the genome in a very localized way," said Ronald DePinho, cancer geneticist at the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Harvard University, who was not involved in the study. "This paper explains how cancer can form in a relatively short period of time." 

Normally when a cell undergoes drastic damage like the shattering of its chromosomes, what researchers call chromothripsis, it dies from a failure to pass innate cell cycle checkpoints that monitor DNA damage during mitosis. Sometimes, however, the cell attempts to rescue itself even after multiple breaks in its double stranded DNA (dsDNA). Though in most cases the repairs probably result in changes that are detrimental to the cells ability to continue dividing, Campbell said, by random chance the hodgepodge of repairs can occasionally amplify cancer genes or delete cancer suppressor genes, instigating the once normal cells to begin dividing uncontrollably. 

Campbell and his group used high-throughput sequencing techniques to study the patterns of DNA rearrangements in various cancers -- such as colon, lung, pancreatic, melanoma and bone -- and discovered that massive rearrangements of dsDNA can occur in localized areas, on chromosomes 9 and 13, for example, where important cancer genes are known to exist. 

Partly due to the focal nature of the damage, the group argues it's highly unlikely that catastrophic rearrangements occur as separate, sequential events, the traditional view of how cancer forms, but rather as a single, cataclysmic affair. While the phenomenon seems to occur in only a small percentage of all cancers -- just two to three percent --the researchers argue it's actually a substantial amount of cases, given the prevalence of cancer. Furthermore, they estimate that chromosomal breakdowns may account for up to 25 percent of bone cancers. 

However, the cause of the damage remains elusive, though "the fact that it occurs more often in bone cancers is a clue about the mechanism of the event," said DePinho. "There must be something fundamentally different about bone cells because they are more susceptible to such catastrophic events." 

One possibility, the group speculates, is that the damage occurs as a result of ionizing radiation from sources like x-rays or nuclear disasters, which is known to cause dsDNA breaks. "It's tempting to speculate that the reason we see [the phenomenon] more in bone is because it's more affected by ionizing radiation" than other kinds of cells, said Campbell. "Some radionuclides preferentially home to bone and would therefore preferentially irradiate [it]." 

Campbell and his team plan to test this theory by taking tumor samples from people that have been exposed to large amounts of radiation, such as during the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the Ukraine or the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan during World War II. Campbell said they also plan to induce the phenomenon in vitro using lasers, which can have the same localizing effect on DNA as they observed, to see if the massive rearrangements cause the increases in cancer directly. 

"Understanding what mechanism is causing these catastrophic events would be an exciting area of future research," said DePinho. 

P.J. Stevens et al., "Massive Genomic Rearrangement Acquired in Single Catastrophic Event during Cancer Developement," Cell, 144:27-40, 2011. 


Read more: Normal today, cancer tomorrow - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57907/#ixzz1Ac1Z1HO8

Normal today, cancer tomorrow - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences

Normal today, cancer tomorrow - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences: "Without warning cancer can arise from a single catastrophic chromosomal event involving tens to hundreds of breaks in the DNA that are haphazardly pieced back together, researchers reported in the January 7th issue of Cell."

China takes new measure to restore confidence in dairy

China takes new measure to restore confidence in dairy: "Chinese dairy companies will have to renew production licenses or risk closure this year, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
News of the policy change comes from comments made at a conference in Beijing by the director of a government agency responsible for food safety.

Xinhua News Agency said Zhi Shuping of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine warned that dairy firms must obtain new production licenses this year or be closed.

The measure is designed to improve quality and safety in the domestic dairy industry. Confidence in the industry plummeted in 2008 when melamine-tainted milk products killed six children."

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