European Dissemination Event (WP8)

2 September 2015

The first of two dissemination meetings was organized as a parallel session to the 9th Annual EPIZONE Meeting, which this year was combined with the 10th International Conference of the European Society for Veterinary Virology (ESVV). The meetings’ emphasis was on multidisciplinary approaches to animal disease prevention and control with a special focus on recent research advances. Being very much in line with LinkTADs areas of interest, the meetings brought together a very relevant audience for the purpose of dissemination.  The LinkTADs session started with a presentation of Daniel Beltran-Alcrudo, the project coordinator from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), who introduced an overview of the project, its rationale, objectives, structure (i.e. work packages), and major achievements to date. This was followed with a presentation by Kai Zhang from the Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação (SPI) on the major sources of research funding in China, as well as the process of registering and accessing the LinkTADs Online Cooperation Opportunities/Funding Database. Francois Roger then presented on cooperation activities in the field of veterinary epidemiology betweenthe Centre de coopération international en recherché agronomique pour le développement CIRAD and China, giving a more complete overview of activities conducted under WP3, including a new project on Japanese encephalitis. Timothee Vergne from RVC illustrated the different teaching opportunities between the EU and China, elaborating on how the research priorities and gaps were identified while focusing on the China Field Epidemiology Training Program for Veterinarians (C-FETPV) program. Finally, Frederik Widén from the Statens veterinärmedicinska anstalt (SVA) described how a newly developed portable PCR assay may be used for the rapid detection and differentiation of African and classical swine fever viruses under field conditions.

The five presentations can be downloaded here and the agenda for the meeting can be found attached below.