Brian Perry

University of Oxford | OX · Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine

The recent call to halt biodiversity loss by protecting half the planet has been hotly contested because of the extent to which people might be excluded from these landscapes. It is clear that incorporating landscapes that implicitly work for indigenous people is vital to achieving any sustainable targets. We examine an attempt to balance the trade...

An outstanding Tanzanian scientist in the field of veterinary epidemiology and One Health research.

Invited opening plenary paper at the Southern African Society for Veterinary Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine (SASVEPM) in East London, South Africa

Small farmers produce most food in low- and middle-income countries and most small farmers rely on directly or indirectly working equids (WE). The lack of methods and metrics for assessing the role of WE hampers realisation of WE contributions. Based on literature review and a survey of WE welfare experts, we propose a framework for optimising WE p...

Background : This paper describes a pilot study undertaken in 2018, to determine the key data needs of each of the different Ethiopian dairy sector stakeholder groups. The study aimed to characterise the emerging trends of dairy product production, processing, retailing and consumption in Ethiopia, and to identify and characterise current and futur...

Background : This paper describes a pilot study undertaken in 2018, to determine the key data needs of each of the different Ethiopian dairy sector stakeholder groups. The study aimed to characterise the emerging trends of dairy product production, processing, retailing and consumption in Ethiopia, and to identify and characterise current and futur...

Background : This paper describes a pilot study undertaken in 2018, to determine the key data needs of each of the different Ethiopian dairy sector stakeholder groups. The study aimed to characterise the emerging trends of dairy product production, processing, retailing and consumption in Ethiopia, and to identify and characterise current and futur...

This paper reviews the rapidly changing global demands for animal-source foods, examines the agri-food systems behind these changes, and discusses the potential responses required by public-sector Veterinary Services to meet these new demands.

Managing the health needs of livestock contributes to reducing poverty and improving the livelihoods of smallholder and pastoralist livestock keepers globally. Animal health practitioners, producers, policymakers, and researchers all must prioritize how to mobilize limited resources. This study employed three approaches to prioritize animal health...

The Uruguayan Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), the Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (INIA), and the Instituto Nacional de Carnes (INAC) together commissioned an independent evaluation of the implications of ceasing vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in the country, and to assess the technical, r...

This book contains 18 chapters that describes the evolving and multi-faceted roles of ILRI in addressing these and other global challenges in nearly a half century of research. ILRI researchers and partners took leading roles, for example, in the following. This volume can serve as a reference and resource for all interested in the role of livestoc...

Plenary paper presented at the 7th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture (AACAA) in Accra, Ghana, held from 29 July – 1 August 2019.

Africa bears the brunt of many of the world’s most devastating human and animal infectious diseases, a good number of which have no licensed or effective vaccines available. The continent’s potential to generate novel interventions against these global health threats is however largely untapped. Strengthening Africa’s vaccine research and developme...

Livestock production in Africa is key to national economies, food security and rural livelihoods, and > 85% of livestock keepers live in extreme poverty. With poverty elimination central to the Sustainable Development Goals, livestock keepers are therefore critically important. Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious livestock disease widespr...

Africa bears the brunt of many of the world’s most devastating human and animal infectious diseases, a good number of which have no licensed or effective vaccines available. The continent’s potential to generate novel interventions against these global health threats is however largely untapped. Strengthening Africa’s vaccine research and developme...

This paper discusses the sustainability of livestock systems, emphasising bidirectional relations with animal health. We review conventional and contrarian thinking on sustainability and argue that in the most common approaches to understanding sustainability, health aspects have been under-examined. Literature review reveals deep concerns over the...

AgResults, a $122m multi-donor, multi-lateral initiative, is creating incentives for / rewarding high-impact agricultural innovations that promote global food security, health and nutrition. The largest of these initiatives is the Prize for the development of a new vaccine for Brucella melitensis infection in small ruminants, and US$ 30 million has...

This invited plenary paper reviews the multiple contributions of equids and equine commodities to development in low and middle income countries.

These is an increasing interest in determining the impact of vaccine technologies developed using public funding targeted at international development, and understanding the factors and ingredients which contribute to the success and impacts of such vaccines. This paper chronicles the development of a live vaccine against East Coast fever (ECF), a...

Many societies are spoiled for choice when they purchase meat and other livestock products, and around the globe food choice has grown dramatically in the last two decades. What is more, besides the cost and obvious health concerns influencing commodity section, an increasing proportion of choices is made to contribute to the achievement of certain...

A popular lecture directed to non-specialists about the contributions to understanding and measuring the links between research and international development

Professor Declan McKeever, a much-loved colleague and friend who died in January 2014, devoted much of his professional life to developing vaccines against tick-borne diseases of cattle. A conference was held at Hatfield House on the 21st October, 2014, bringing together colleagues from across the world to discuss the challenges of parasite control...

Brian Perry reports from the fifth meeting of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, an initiative established to address the challenges and opportunities arising in the pursuit of a sustainable livestock sector

Dear Sir,We spent Easter with our daughter and her family in their house adjacent to Enonkishu conservancy (http://www.enonkishu.com/Enonkishu_Conservancy/Welcome.html), the most northerly of the conservancies in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, which borders the encroaching habitat destruction and cultivation progressively moving southward toward the...

Perry, B.D., Morton, J., Stur, W. (2014). A strategic overview of livestock research undertaken by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Consortium, 64 pp. http://www.sciencecouncil.cgiar.org/fileadmin/templates/ispc/documents/White_Papers/White_Paper_Strategic_Review_of_Livestock_in_the_CGIAR_plus_ISPC_comm.pdf

Brian Perry and Enrique Lora (2011). Independent Evaluation of Project Development Assistance to Farmers in Remote Areas of Kosovo and Montenegro - GCP/RER/019/LUX, FAO Office of Evaluation, Rome. http://typo3.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/oed/docs/GCPRER019LUX_2011_ER.pdf

Brian Perry, Bernd Bultemeier, Mick Mwala, Sharmala Naidoo (2011). Swaziland Agricultural Development Programme; mid-term evaluation of the US$ 20 million investment by the European Union in the resuscitation of Swaziland’s agriculture. http://typo3.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/oed/docs/Swaziland%20Agricultural%20Development%20Programme_2011_ER.pd...

Perry, B.D., Tom Randolph, Bernard Bett, Delia Grace, Keith Sones, Joerg Henning, Anja Globig, Pamela Pali, Jane Poole, Mahomadou Fadiga, Heather Hannah, Ekanem Ekanem, Paul Abdu, Christopher Molokwu (2011). Independent Impact Assessment of the World Bank-funded Nigeria Avian Influenza Control and Human Pandemic Preparedness and Response Project (N...

Alam, N., Olson, M., Perry, B.D., Vaai, K., Aiazzi, T., de Vivanco, C., Bonomi, G., (2014). Evaluation of FAO’s Regional and Sub-Regional Offices for Asia and the Pacific. Office of Evaluation, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome, http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/oed/docs/Eval%20RAP_2014_ER.zip

Perry, B.D., Kaelo, D., Bultemeier, B. (2012). Independent evaluation of “Supporting Food Security and Reducing Poverty in Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania through Dynamic Conservation of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS)- GCP/GLO/198/GER”. FAO Office of Evaluation, FAO, Rome, 76 pp. http://typo3.fao.org/fileadmin/use...

The structure and dynamics of cut flower export markets from Kenya and Ethiopia, with particular reference to trade with Norway

We quantified the between-village transmission rate, β (the rate of transmission of H5N1 HPAI virus per effective contact), and the reproductive number, R(e) (the average number of outbreaks caused by one infectious village during its entire infectious period), of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus in Nigeria using outbreak data co...

Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 occurred in Nigeria between December 2005 and July 2008. We describe temporal and spatial characteristics of these outbreaks at State and Local Government Area (LGA) levels. A total of 25 of 37 States (67.6%; Exact 95% CI: 50.2-82.0%) and 81 of 774 LGAs (10.5%; Exact 95% CI: 8.4-12.8%) were...

Africa presents a number of unique challenges in the field of animal health, which distinguishes the continent from many other regions of the world. Africa is home to a diverse range of agro-ecological and production systems, with significant interactions between them that are mediated by several elements: the movements of wildlife and pastoralist...

Animal disease outbreaks pose significant threats to livestock sectors throughout the world, both from the standpoint of the economic impacts of the disease itself and the measures taken to mitigate the risk of disease introduction. These impacts are multidimensional and not always well understood, complicating effective policy response. In the dev...

We review the global dynamics of livestock disease over the last two decades. Our imperfect ability to detect and report disease hinders assessment of trends, but we suggest that, although endemic diseases continue their historic decline in wealthy countries, poor countries experience static or deteriorating animal health and epidemic diseases show...

Market access for livestock products from Africa has traditionally been limited by the presence of certain infectious diseases that pose risks to animal and human health. However, an increasingly discussed option for widening that access is commodity-based trade (CBT) focusing on the health and safety attributes of the product rather than the disea...

Brian Perry specialises in livestock health and broader agricultural development issues in the developing world. He graduated from Edinburgh in 1969, and after a short spell in mixed practice, studied tropical disease. Since 1971, he has lived in Ethiopia, Colombia, Zambia, the USA and Kenya. He is an honorary professor at the universities of Edinb...

Poverty is now at the heart of development discourse; we discuss how it is measured and understood. We next consider the negative and positive impacts of livestock on pro-poor development. Taking a value-chain approach that includes keepers, users and eaters of livestock, we identify diseases that are road blocks on the 'three livestock pathways ou...

While Ethiopia is Africa’s largest livestock producer, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) barriers and animal diseases have traditionally constrained market access. A system dynamics model examined the feasibility of a proposed SPS certification system under a number of scenarios. Model results indicate that the system may not be viable for beef ex...

Factors associated with growth and weight gains were examined in a prospective observational study that was conducted in 5 cohorts of female calves. A total of 225 calves on 1888 smallholder dairy farms were observed a period of one and a half years. The calves were distributed in 5 agro-ecological zones (AEZ) –grazing strata namely: Upper Midlands...

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) remains one of the most important livestock diseases of the world, given its highly infectious nature, its broad economic impacts on animal wellbeing and productivity, and its implications for successful access to domestic and export markets for livestock and products. The impacts of the disease vary markedly between de...

The current system for the certification of internationally traded animal commodities can act as a barrier to developing countries accessing high-value international markets. In this Viewpoint article, Gavin Thomson and colleagues discuss the situation as it stands and identify inconsistencies with respect to the certification process. They suggest...

This paper examines the role of livestock products as commodities of trade, responding to the demand and higher prices that many external markets offer, and at the same time providing important contributions to the development process in poorer countries. It highlights that this opportunity is not without its threats: much of the Western world has,...

This paper discusses the role of integrated epidemiology and economics modelling in animal health planning, with particular reference to the evaluation of national level interventions that involve the vaccination of livestock. Well-integrated epidemiology and economics is considered essential if model outputs are to be of value in national animal d...

https://www.anipedia.org/resources/zimbabwe-theileriosis/1137

The impact of tick control on the productivity of indigenous cattle was investigated in three herds of East African shorthorn Zebu and Zebu x Ankole (Nganda) breeds, maintained under three tick management systems practised under ranch conditions: twice-a-week dipping, once-a-month dipping, and no tick control. The milk production and the growth rat...

The authors evaluate the impact of foot and mouth disease (FMD) and control of the disease in the Philippines using cost-benefit analysis. A scenario in which FMD control is maintained at recent levels with continued presence of the disease is compared to scenarios in which a publicly funded programme achieves eradication by 2005 (current policy ob...

There is a general lack of data on the different patterns of dynamics and impact of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in South-East Asia and the impact the disease has on different sectors, in particular the smallholder sector in which livestock play such an important role. A pilot study was conducted of a recent outbreak of FMD that swept across the so...

Two experiments were carried out to identify the target population of cattle for immunisation against East Coast fever (ECF) using the infection-and-treatment method. Firstly, a sentinel-calf study was used to determine the age window for ECF immunisation by determining ages at clinical detection of infection with Theileria parva. Six groups of fiv...

A cross-sectional study was carried out from July to September 1989 in Kaloleni Division, Coast Province, Kenya to estimate the prevalence of vector-transmitted diseases in small-holder dairy cattle and to identify the risk factors associated with different management systems. One hundred and thirty of the 157 herds with dairy cattle in Kaloleni Di...

A longitudinal study was carried out in the coastal lowlands coconut-cassava agro-ecological zone of Kaloleni Division, Coast Province, Kenya between June 1990 and December 1991 to estimate disease incidence and cause-specific case-fatality risk in an average of 120 cattle in 26 small-holder dairy herds kept in two grazing-management systems. East...

The association between mean daily weight gain, Theileria parva infections, clinical East Coast fever and other possible determinants of weight gain were examined in a longitudinal observational study that was conducted in cohorts of female calves from five agro-ecological zone (AEZ)-grazing strata. The strata were upper-midlands (UM) 1 zero-grazin...

Endemic stability is an epidemiological state of a population, in which clinical disease is scarce despite high level of infection. The notion was developed to describe patterns of tick-borne disease in cattle. However, we propose a general model of endemic stability that is applicable to a broader range of diseases that are important in public hea...

The general role of veterinary epidemiology and economics to national animal-disease control throughout the world is considered for the four main groupings of animal diseases: zoonotic, food-borne, endemic and epidemic diseases. This is done by considering how veterinary epidemiology and economics has contributed to priority setting (which diseases...

A study of 150 dog-owning households from six randomly selected sublocations was conducted in Machakos District, Kenya. Initially, all households were visited to collect information on dog ecology and demography based on WHO guidelines and to collect serum for rabies antibody detection. A second visit was made 1 year later, to obtain follow-up data...

The indirect MAP 1B ELISA based on the recombinant MAP 1B fragment of the immunodominant MAP I protein of Ehrlichia ruminantium is considered to be the most sensitive and specific assay for the serodiagnosis of heartwater. In this study, we evaluated its reliability in detecting exposure to E. ruminantium in field populations of domestic ruminants...

A prospective cohort study was conducted in five purposively-sampled agro-ecological zone (AEZ)-grazing system strata in Murang’a District, Kenya, between March 1995 and June 1996. The study strata were selected based on a preliminary characterization study to represent the widest range of risks to East Coast fever (ECF) in the District and include...

The purpose of the study was to characterize the differences in epidemiology (risks of infection, morbidity, mortality) and potential control of East Coast fever (ECF) between the selected strata. Evidence of Theileria parva infection was assessed by increased antibody levels as measured in an indirect ELISA test by the percent positivity (PP) of s...

Analysis of the transmission dynamics of Cowdria ruminantium, the tick-borne rickettsial agent of heartwater in ruminants, requires accurate measures of infection in vector populations. To obtain these, Amblomnia hebraeum ticks were collected at two heartwater-endemic locations in the lowveld and highveld regions of Zimbabwe and assessed for C. rum...

We used a mathematical description of the transmission dynamics of the tick-borne infection Cowdria ruminantium in commercial beef enterprises in Zimbabwe to consider the potential impact of a candidate vaccine to prevent heartwater. The important characteristics of the vaccine were (1) a delay in development of full protection, (2) prevention of c...

Adult Amblyomma hebraeum ticks, the principle vector of heartwater (cowdriosis) of domestic ruminants in southern Africa, were collected in pheromone traps placed in Kruger National Park, an exclusively wildlife sanctuary in South Africa. These ticks transmitted Cowdria ruminantium, the rickettsial agent causing heartwater, to a susceptible goat, r...

A pilot study of the economic impact of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in the countries and region of South-East Asia is described. Previous economic impact assessments are reviewed and summarised and a synthesis of these contributions is constructed. A framework for the future economic impact of the disease is then developed, incorporating analyses...