Gastrointestinal parasitism has been identified as the greatest animal health constraint to the poor in S.E. Asia and Africa South of the Sahara. Much of the small ruminant production in India and South Africa lies in the hands of resource poor small holder farmers (RPSF farmers) for whom blood feeding nematode parasites such as Haemonchus contortus in sheep and goats, Mecistocirrus digitatus in sheep and cattle are among the most important constraints on production. These parasites cause substantial blood loss in affected animals, impair production as defined by growth rate, meat quality and milk production and often cause death. Control is achieved by frequent dosing with anthelmintics, a strategy threatened by an increasing resistance to these drugs in the target nematodes. Solutions to be examined here are 1) to develop a more targeted drug treatment strategy where only animals suffering from worm challenge are treated in a flock/herd thus limiting exposure to the drug and reducing frequency of dosing and, hence, cost 2) to develop molecular tests which can be applied to monitor the drug resistant status of the parasites on a particular farm or regionally, information which can be used to predict the likely impact of novel control interventions such as 1) above and 3) the development of a vaccination strategy which relies on the fact that only very low (microgram) amounts of vaccine protein are required to induce protective immunity. The project builds on existing strong collaborations between the participants, provides researcher training and technology transfer and offers the prospect of enhancing the livelihood of RPSF.

Farmed seafood is an important source of protein for food and feeds with a low-carbon footprint which has an important role to play in helping to build a sustainable food system. A strategic and long-term approach for the sustainable growth of a resilient EU aquaculture is, therefore, more relevant today than ever. However, the efficient and cost-effective control of pathogens remains among the main challenges for the sector, particularly relevant for Europe, where there is a great variety of species and production systems, which hinders the implementation of good husbandry practices tailored to each aquatic species. Through active engagement with key stakeholders, Cure4Aqua aims to jointly improve the resilience of EU aquaculture under environmental, biological, and socio-economic stress, by improving aquatic animal health and welfare and supporting the environmentally friendly, inclusive, safe, and healthy production of seafood. Cure4Aqua will do so by 1) developing cost-effective vaccines to prevent disease caused by 5 pathogens of economic significance to EU aquaculture; 2) Identifying markers with diagnostic capacity to be integrated to selective breeding programs to improve stress and disease management; 3) Developing innovative, bio-based and sustainable solutions as an alternative to antibiotics for controlling fish pathogens at various life stages and alleviate the pressure of global antimicrobial resistance; 4) Developing new tools and technology to improve health and welfare monitoring at the fish farm level and diagnostics of fish pathogens both at the laboratory and the fish farm levels; 5) Placing fish welfare at the foreground of aquaculture production, through the development of high welfare standards that consider different life-stages, production systems, and knowledge of welfare needs, and 6) Ensuring effective external communication, dissemination and exploitation of project activities and results to all relevant target groups. Workday Project Setup Complete

TechCare is a multi-actor approach project aiming to develop appropriate business models using innovative technologies to improve welfare management for all EU small ruminant (SR) systems, to enable stakeholders to choose animal welfare-friendly products. SRs play a key socio-economic role in Europe, especially in harsh environments where innovative technology is not much implanted. SRs are often managed as a flock/herd, allowing only average welfare states to be considered. Innovative technologies are a unique opportunity to monitor and improve SR welfare management at the individual or flock/herd level, along the value chain. Based on SR welfare state-of-the-art, TechCare will undertake a multi-actor approach to encapsulate stakeholders’ expectations in terms of welfare and innovative technologies, and provide them with adapted solutions, in a co-design approach. TechCare will cover all stages of SR production and build novel welfare approaches to develop and validate tools, early warning systems, algorithms and indicators for efficient identification of welfare issues, including positive welfare, to include them in welfare management models. The innovative technologies identified in TechCare will pass different stages of validation, from prototyping to large scale studies. TechCare identified solutions will therefore be replicable and adapted to different SR systems, production purposes, and value chains, for improvement of SR welfare management EU-wide. Business models will be constructed and validated with stakeholders. Dissemination, communication and exploitation materials will be produced and widely shared for easy use of TechCare solutions, ensuring their uptake and relevance to all sectors and stakeholders. TechCare will offer a durable improvement of SR welfare management using innovative technologies along the whole value chain and across the EU, and will act as an example in terms of approach and solutions for other species and production systems.

Cryptosporidium parasites are the most important cause of enteric disease in young cattle in UK and worldwide and are also one of the leading causes of infant diarrhoea in humans [1]. Neonatal calves are very vulnerable to cryptosporidiosis resulting in significant morbidity due to severe diarrhoea and dehydration and there are increasing reports of mortality. Cryptosporidiosis is a challenge to control as infected animals shed billions of infective, long lived oocysts into the environment and these are a source of infection for other animals as well as people. The disease has emerged as an increasing problem in beef suckler units, and livestock industry leaders are very concerned about the lack of safe and effective treatments or vaccines available to help prevent and control cryptosporidiosis and have given their strong support for this proposal. Our understanding of the host-pathogen interactions that determine disease outcome is limited. Neonatal calves are very vulnerable to infection and often exhibit clinical disease, whereas older calves are more resistant. The factors involved in determining this age-related susceptibility are unclear and this project aims to address the host factors involved in resistance to cryptosporidiosis by applying novel and innovative in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro technologies to examine in detail the host parasite interaction during acute infection and recovery in calves. One of the constraints for improving our understanding of the factors that determine disease resistance has been the lack of simple research systems that permit the detailed analysis of host parasite interactions. The rodent model is an acknowledged poor comparator for clinical disease in cryptosporidiosis in particular, and the capability for culturing Cryptosporidium parasites in vitro is very limited. This project aims to tackle these gaps in capability by utilising a combination of in vivo and in vitro bovine systems to assess innate and adaptive cellular immune responses and examine the interaction of Cryptosporidium with gut epithelial cells. In addition, innovative 3D bovine gut organoid in vitro culture systems will be applied to enable a detailed analysis of host parasite interactions in the bovine gut epithelium. Data derived from the experimental studies will be validated by comparison to similar data obtained from naturally infected calves on a study farm. This project will provide the fullest exploration yet of how cattle resist infection with Cryptosporidium parasites. A detailed account of the host responses involved will provide an important knowledge platform that will enable the development of vaccines to aid disease prevention and the identification of relevant biomarkers that will enable selective breeding programmes to improve resilience. In addition, the development of novel in vitro bovine systems would revolutionise our capability to study host-pathogen interactions with Cryptosporidium minimising the need for use of animal models. Outputs from the project will be of interest to the animal health industry, livestock producers, environmental and public health workers and to academic researchers. The development of effective control strategies will have a significant impact on the sustainable efficiency of animal production, safeguard food security, improve animal health and welfare, reduce waste and environmental contamination and improve public and environmental health. [1] Streipen B (2013) Nature 503:189

It is hypothesised that intense selection for traits such as liveweight gain and egg/milk yield in production animals has resulted in resources being allocated within the animal to production, at the expense of other physiological processes such as immune function. The SusTradeOff project aims to develop cutting edge technologies to study these trade-offs in two production systems (sheep and poultry): SusTradeOff aims to understand how different dietary protein sources are allocated by animals of different genetic backgrounds between production and immune function and how this allocation is affected by stage of production, disease or vaccination. To achieve these aims, biological materials and proteomics technologies will first be developed to study these trade-offs at the individual animal level, which will facilitate the identification of protein sources and/or targeted protein supplementation to enhance or maintain immune function in the face of high production demands. Population studies in experimental and commercial lines will investigate trade-offs between resilience, immunocompetence and production, providing additional genotypes and phenotypes to select in balanced breeding programmes. Data integration and modelling will provide prediction models for trade-offs and decision making tools that will then be validated at the production level with breeding industry partners under commercial conditions using industry standard operational scenarios. By developing integrated animal health and production management strategies to improve competitiveness and sustainability of animal production, especially by delivering more efficient use of proteins, the SusTradeOff project maps to the 3 Research Areas of the call “SusAn”.