News

New tool aims to boost milk production and improve animal health

SEBI-Livestock – a new five-year programme, will continue our work on monitoring the impacts of livestock investments in low-and middle-income countries, supporting the LD4D community to deliver solutions, and developing livestockdata.org as a valuable data and evidence resource for the sector.

Automation will speed up data-gathering

The project will use data-driven approaches to model antimicrobial use and resistance in human-livestock interactions in low-and middle-income countries.

Measures to prevent infections aim to reduce antibiotic use and improve milk production

As Nigeria eases COVID-19 restrictions, Livestock Officer Abdulkadir Musa Mohammed reports on the challenges to livestock-dependent communities

Mycoplasma laboratory at Ilorin University will support routine diagnostic testing of economically important diseases.

Livestockdata.org offers data and evidence on livestock health and productivity in low and middle-income countries

Since 2016, the team at Supporting Evidence Based Interventions (SEBI) have worked to mobilise and apply data and evidence to help the livestock community make better decisions, ones that improve livelihoods for smallholders in low and middle-income countries. Now, we are trying to untangle and foresee how COVID-19 intersects with our work. We point out four areas of convergence, and suggest key actions now and in the future.

SEBI director Andy Peters attends the launch of SMArt, a new charity to improve the regulation of veterinary medicines worldwide.

Report back from Livestock Data for Decisions (LD4D) meeting, 4-6 February 2020.

Campus-wide research dialogue spurs ideas for collective action at Africa Week 2019

Researchers investigate overlooked animal health technologies for Africa

A series of openly licensed training videos provide clear and easy to follow examples of good on-farm practices for smallholder dairy farmers.

Innovative data-driven tool will accelerate collection of crucial evidence

In this seminar, Professor Mario Herrero addresses the key messages of the EAT Lancet Report, including the role of livestock in sustainable and healthy diets. 

Projects will generate data and insights on progress and impacts

Evidence-based interventions set to improve health and productivity for cattle, sheep and goats in Africa’s most populous country

Easter Bush livestock researchers highlight range of animal health productivity projects

A research consortium led by the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture is evaluating husbandry and health interventions that may improve young livestock health, and thus inform a large-scale strategy for reducing young stock mortality.

Hackathon students devise new ways to track animal health and productivity

Researchers have identified the source of a neurological disease in small ruminants in northern Tanzania as the dog tapeworm Taenia multiceps, opening the door for potential solutions.

“Livestock for African livelihoods: Science, data & innovation for a healthy future” highlighted innovative research as part of Africa Week 2018 Celebrations

The University of Edinburgh Supporting Evidence Based Interventions (SEBI) project has been supporting a study of the most impactful livestock diseases in Nigeria, starting with cattle and small ruminants in 7 Northern states.

“Great science is helping to turn livestock into a pathway out of poverty for hundreds of millions of people,” said Bill Gates in his recent visit to the University of Edinburgh's Easter Bush Campus.

The Livegaps2 project has created a new website LiveGAPS 2 with the latest update on project developments.

Louise Donnison, SEBI data analyst, attended LD4D at the GLAD meeting at ILRI, Kenya in October 2017.

Louise Donnison, SEBI data analyst, attended a 2 day workshop in Berlin on Linked Open Data in Agriculture.

Karen Smyth attended the CGIAR’s Big Data in Agriculture Convention which took place in Cali, Colombia in September 2017.

SEBI was in the news this week with the project receiving coverage across a range of media outlets.

Karen Smyth, SEBI Deputy Director, met with Woutrina Smith, Young Stock Mortality Project, University of California and Patricia Conrad, Co-Director, University of California Global Health Institute, to discuss SEBI and UC Davis’s activities in Ethiopia.

The Livestock Data for Decision (LD4D) community of practice held its first dedicated meeting in June 2017 in Edinburgh.

The SEBI External Advisory Panel held its inception meeting in Edinburgh in June 2017.

Thirty participants met for the launch of the University of Glasgow’s surveillance platform project at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha, Tanzania on 5 May 2017.

Prof Andy Peters, chair of the Expert Advisory Panel (EAP) of the Governing Council of the International Development Research Canada (IDRC) met in April 2017 in Ottawa to consider applications for the second call under the LVIF programme which was on the theme of veterinary vaccine improvement.

Prof Andy Peters visited Dr Suresh Neethirajan at the university of Guelph in April to discuss the start of a SEBI funded project to field test a new hand held diagnostic device for bovine disease.

Livestock Data for Decisions (LD4D) has gone live!

Cheryl Heath and Karen Smyth visited IAEA in April where they attended a conference on diagnostic techniques for detection of animal and zoonotic diseases.

Dai Harvey, Land o’Lakes visited the SEBI team to discuss his livestock breeding project.

The SEBI team was pleased to host Brendan Power, CSIRO on a 2 day visit to Edinburgh.

SEBI team members Cheryl Heath and Alan Duncan visited Ethiopia on a data gathering exercise.

Researchers at the University of Guelph have been awarded $125,000 under SEBI Programme 3 to fund field trials to test a portable hand held instrument that can detect animal diseases.

The University of Glasgow has received funding of $1.14m through SEBI Program 1 to building a surveillance platform that will allow for the development and long-term evaluation of the animal health interventions in a sustainable way.

SEBI has been experimenting with the  business intelligence tool Tableau, to create visualizations from harmonized data stored in the SEBI database.

The SEBI project was officially launched at a convening in Rome in January 2017.

SEBI Deputy Director, Karen Smyth attended a workshop at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi 16 & 17 December 2016 to learn more about the work of IMPACT model, as part of the collaboration between IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) and ILRI under the Global Futures and Strategic Foresight program.

Mario Herrero and his team at CSIRO, Brisbane hosted Cheryl Heath in November 2016.

Cheryl Heath visited Dr Pande and his team at BAIF Development Research Foundation, Pune, India, in November 2016.

Isaac Olorunshola, Department of Veterinary Microbiology at the University of Ilorin visited SEBI as part of a data gathering and knowledge exchange exercise.