US-UK Collab: Avian influenza virus in cattle, a framework for forecasting transmission dynamics of zoonotic disease in livestock systems

Infectious diseases are a major threat to the livestock industry. Disease outbreaks can be very difficult and expensive to control with livestock producers and the industry facing the highest financial and personal costs. The ongoing highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak in US dairy cattle shows how rapidly infection can spread and the multiple challenges faced by the livestock industries in controlling disease. Diseases like HPAI that can infect multiple livestock species, wildlife, and humans are particularly challenging. Our goal is to build a toolset that can make national-scale projections about the likely spread of HPAI in livestock, wildlife, and humans, and how we can enact effective control. We will achieve this through five main objectives: 1) we will collect and combine data on the HPAI outbreak and livestock shipments; 2) we will determine the risk of HPAI being spread to livestock from wildlife and the environment; 3) we will develop models to make HPAI predictions in the US and the UK; 4) we will make predictions about the future risk that HPAI poses to cattle farms and whether the biggest threats come from other cattle farms or from wildlife; 5) we will study the role of surveillance and control actions on reducing the spread and the risk of HPAI. By the end of the project, we will have the software, data and methods in place to understand and predict the spread and control of HPAI and similar infections. We will ensure our results meet the needs of the industry by working closely with the US Department of Agriculture, state veterinarians, and industry stakeholders. The findings of this project will help protect livestock producers, livestock industries, and US agriculture from the costs and consequences of current and future infectious disease outbreaks.