Animal Health
The issue: what’s at stake?
Animal diseases pose a major threat to agriculture and food security, with some capable of causing significant economic losses and disrupting entire supply chains. Two of the most contagious are foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), both of which require surveillance and rapid response measures to prevent outbreaks.
Foot-and-mouth affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, and pigs. The virus spreads rapidly through direct contact, contaminated objects, and respiratory aerosols, which can be carried by wind over long distances, making it exceptionally difficult to contain. The 2001 outbreak in the UK cost the public sector £3bn and the private sector £5bn. Meanwhile, bird flu continues to escalate globally, with the UK experiencing record-breaking outbreaks in recent years, posing a severe risk to poultry farming. The risk of human infection demands continuous monitoring and control globally.
The need for technological breakthroughs
Preventing and controlling major animal disease outbreaks requires faster, more effective detection methods to monitor airborne transmission and environmental persistence.
For foot-and-mouth disease, real-time airborne sampling could transform surveillance by detecting viral emissions before clinical signs appear. This would enable early intervention, resulting in shorter, smaller outbreaks and minimising unnecessary culling. By better understanding airborne spread and improving transmission risk assessment models, these technologies can help prioritise farms for surveillance and refine containment strategies. Similarly, for avian influenza, understanding how the virus spreads through aerosols will inform outbreak management approaches, ensuring targeted interventions and reducing the risk of farm-to-farm transmission.
Why the Biodetection Technologies Hub?
Hub researchers are collaborating with The Pirbright Institute, a world leader in the research and surveillance of viral diseases of livestock, and viruses that spread from animals to humans. Pirbright has previously funded a project with University of Hertfordshire to use novel bioaerosol samplers to monitor particulate emissions from pig farms. This supported the generation of data to improve risk prediction for the airborne spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
The UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) carries out surveillance for notifiable diseases; they conduct sampling and testing of wild and farmed birds. Hub researchers are working with APHA to explore the use of various bioaerosol collection technologies to identify avian influenza.
How do we get there?
Hub funding will support the deepening of research partnerships with Pirbright and APHA and open up opportunities for new collaborations within the animal health theme.
Pirbright has hosted a Hub PhD student through the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Aerosol Science; the project involved the use of samplers developed at University of Hertfordshire to collect aerosols for the detection of the foot-and-mouth virus. This offers the potential for alternative means of detecting FMDV-infected animals and herds that are more effective than clinical surveillance. The Hub intends to take these technologies forward and explore their application to other high consequence livestock viruses.