AUSTRALIA – Technology Brings Biosecurity Experts Face-to-Face – May 31, 2011

AUSTRALIA – Responding to outbreaks of deadly animal-borne diseases promises to be quicker and easier with new technology allowing disease experts to work in real-time with chief veterinary officers across Australia.

Researchers at AAHL are using CSIRO’s collaboration platform technology to help them communicate with colleagues outside the secure biocontainment area and assist communication with chief veterinary officers across Australia. (CSIRO)

CSIRO’s collaboration technology – on display at the CeBIT Australia tradeshow in Sydney this week – is in the process of being rolled out nationally.

The chief veterinary officers of Australia and Queensland will be the first to trial the system in June by linking with researchers at CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, Victoria.

“When dealing with disease outbreaks, time is of the essence,” said research leader at AAHL, Dr Alex Hyatt.

“A high-speed, real-time interactive system will greatly improve the management of emergency animal disease outbreaks in Australia.”

At AAHL the platform is being used to interconnect researchers across a physical biosecurity containment barrier. The technology provides dual full high definition (HD) video conferencing and a shared workspace that provides secure, real-time access to critical technology such as microscopy, pathology and software applications on a display of over eight million pixels –four times that of the average desktop screen.

“We are now able to ‘meet’ with colleagues and share information such as pathology records, high-resolution maps and even view images on a microscope in real-time, easily and quickly,” Dr Hyatt said.

Before deployment of this collaboration platform, information was transferred via telephones, scanners and emails. At AAHL, doing anything more complicated – even just holding a meeting – meant going through a rigorous decontamination procedure to exit the facility, while veterinary managers had to travel interstate or use low-end video and/or telephone conferencing equipment, supplemented with print-outs.

* “A high-speed, real-time interactive system will greatly improve the management of emergency animal disease outbreaks in Australia”

Dr Alex Hyatt, research leader at AAHL

CSIRO’s information and communication technologies (ICT) researchers are experts in human-computer interaction and have designed the platform with users in mind, so people in different locations can work together as if they were in the same room.

The platform’s uniqueness is achieved through a combination of off-the-shelf components, including four large display screens and two video cameras, and CSIRO-developed software with its simple on-screen controller.

The platform requires bandwidth of 12-60 Mbps. Those currently being installed in Queensland and the ACT are connected by AARNET, Australia’s high-speed fibre network connecting CSIRO, universities and other major research institutions.

CSIRO Director of eResearch, Dr John Taylor, said the next step will be to build ‘collaboratories’ which use CSIRO’s advanced collaboration technologies to enable scientists from around Australia and the world to work together to address the big science challenges.

“Cloud computing and high-speed networks will also play a significant role in building global-scale collaboratories to support scientific research.

“There’s a huge range of possible applications for this technology outside the research sector in education and working from home, for example, as high-speed networks become more widely available in Australia and around the globe,” Dr Taylor said.

Information ThePoultrySite News Desk

INDIA – India Seeking to Grow Poultry Exports

INDIA – Infrastructure bottlenecks and intermittent bird flu outbreaks are hampering Indian poultry exports, by negating a significant advantage from steady feedstock supplies, a top industry official said on Wednesday.

India’s domestic poultry market, estimated at about $7.7 billion, is booming. The country, which is the world third-biggest supplier of eggs, however is struggling to expand its international market share currently pegged only at about $110 million annually, according to Reuters.

India’s main advantage is adequate supplies of feeds like corn and soymeal which are not genetically modified, lending the world’s sixth-largest broiler producer a distinct cost advantage.

But intermittent outbreaks of bird flu in pockets of India since 2006 have hampered exports. Storage and processing problems have only made things worse and the industry is calling for opening the food retail sector to wider investment, including foreign, to help address these issues.

“Import bans (by other countries) due to bird flu does not allow us to derive cost advantage benefits from ample supplies of feedstocks,” Jagbir Singh Dhull, president of the Poultry Federation of India (PFI) told the Reuters Global Food and Agriculture Summit.

“Allowing foreign funds in retail will help poultry exports through development of modern processing units and cold chains,” he said.

India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said earlier this month the country planned to liberalise investment rules to seek foreign funds to develop key sectors such as retail and infrastructure.

India’s poultry exports are dominated by eggs, mainly to the Middle East and Africa, with scant sales of processed items.

But the domestic poultry industry continues to grow at a fast pace – with the broiler segment averaging gains of 10 to 12 per cent annually, while eggs show increases of 5 to 6 per cent, the PFI chief said.

“Ours is a one of the fastest growing markets in the world as globally the consumption demand has more or less stabilised at 1 to 2 per cent,” said Mr Dhull, who heads one of India’s top ten poultry firms based in northern Haryana state.

In February, eastern Tripura state which shares a long border with neighbouring Bangladesh, reported fresh cases of bird flu, eight months after India reclaimed avian influenza free status.

“Bird flu cases occur frequently after a gap of six to eight months,” said Dhull, adding that PFI has been urging the federal government to mark out bird flu-prone areas to avoid any bans on poultry products in case of an outbreak.

ThePoultrySite News Desk