Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
It is evident from the recent COVID-19 pandemic, frequent large-scale food-borne outbreaks, and the current highly pathogenic avian influenza epizootic that many human and animal disease problems are inextricably linked. Even so, huge barriers exist between food production industries, public health organizations, and human health academic institutions that make such complex problems difficult to mitigate. Such complex Food Security problems are increasing. Through hunger and economic distress they are disproportionately impacting the lives of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged. Hence, we seek USDA support for a 500-person, international, One Health Research Symposium to review Food Security research and problem solving efforts. This Symposium will be held at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas during April 21-23, 2024. Our international Symposium Planning Committee of 22 diverse experts has designing a program to engage leaders in agricultural industry, public health, veterinary health, food safety, and environmental health institutions. The Symposium will be unique in that food productions experts will be centrally featured with the goal of identifying common ground from which new interdisciplinary research partnerships might arise and lead to better food resilence. We will feature lectures from the beef, dairy, egg & poultry, pork, aquaculture, fresh produce, and processed food industries. Other research topics will include emerging infectious diseases (viral, bacterial, and other), and the evironmental, social, and public communication factors that impact Food Security. We will particularly highlight successful One Health mitigation approaches to Food Security problems. To attract young researchers, we will also feature best abstract and best poster competitions with monetary awards.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The goal of the research symposium will be the sharing of evidence-informed strategies leading to sustainable agricultural systems that will build resilience in addressing USDA's Agricultural Biosecurity within the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.
Project Methods
Complex public health problems such as emerging infectious diseases, occupational health risks faced by agriculture workers, and ongoing concerns with food safety require multidisciplinary and inter-institutional approaches to protect the security, resiliency, and sustainability of the global food supply. Emerging infectious diseases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have highlighted the research needs that encompass individual scientific disciplines and examines diversity, equity, and inclusion with respect to protecting the agriculture labor force, and enhancing food security. The current U.S. avian influenza outbreak has exacerbated an existing supply-chain issue wreaking havoc on producers and consumers of eggs and poultry while raising concerns of continued pathogen mutations that will eventually result in human transmission. African swine fever has decimated swine herds in many parts of the world, and global attention focused on recent Ebola virus outbreaks highlighted the concerns related to the consumption of bush meat, a critical source of protein for impoverished populations.Our Symposium will engage participants through presentation and panel discussions that focus on increasing our national capacity to prevent, rapidly detect, and respond to biological threats to the U.S. agriculture and food supply, increasing agricultural biosecurity at the regional, national, and international levels, and across the public and private sectors. We will not only showcase what research is ongoing but also solicit input from the private food processing sector to identify gaps and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed to protect the U.S. food and agriculture system against threats from pests, diseases, contaminants, and disasters. As we have learned with COVID, the United States is not able to isolate itself from the rest of the world, thus we feel it is important to include our international partners to address detection, diagnostics, surveillance, and/or forecasting of transboundary, emerging, or re-emerging pests and diseases associated with animal production systems and/or transboundary, emerging, reemerging, or invasive diseases, insects and weeds associated with plant production systems.ThisInternational Symposium on One Health Research will build on the success of UTMB's first One Health Symposium, held on December 1, 2022, which drew 110 attendees, 28 of whom were from outside of UTMB, for what was planned as chiefly a UTMB-specific scientific meeting. Participants included other state agencies and local, domestic, and international universities. This 2024 conference will seek to engage a much larger, diverse, audience and have a special focus upon using One Health research in mitigating complex agriculture and food security problems. This meeting is being organized as a data-driven program for identifying Food Security research needs and to seek such multidisciplinary and inter-institutional cooperation in meeting these needs. Given the attention focused on the needs of socially disadvantaged and marginalized populations during the COVID pandemic, such a forum is timely in terms of addressing equity and diversity within the context of food security.In this Symposium we will convene the agricultural industry, public health, veterinary health, food safety and environmental health professionals to discuss common complex problems through presentations of their research and interventions. A data-driven program that involves multiple and diverse professional disciplines together in a single venue will provide a unique One Health forum to focus on the many challenges impacting food security and the burden that disproportionately impacts the socioeconomically disadvantage populations.Our unique Symposium will differ from previous One Health meetings in two major ways.1) We will heavily engage multiple food production industries, inviting them to report their research successes and concerns such that researchers from the human health/public health world may find common ground to partner with them in future research.2) We propose moving away from rhetoric to critical peer-review of One Health-oriented research.We will also include poster sessions (more information regarding the poster session is provided later in this application) with monetary awards for the best One Health-oriented approach to Food Security, encouraging active engagement of trainees at all levels of academic pursuit (undergraduate, Master's level, predoctoral and postdoctoral).The symposium will take place at The Moody Gardens Hotel and Conference Center (Moody Gardens). Moody Gardens is an ideal venue due to its onsite educational attractions such as the Rainforest Pyramid®, Discovery Pyramid® with NASA-inspired and traveling science exhibits, and Aquarium Pyramid® - all of which are aligned with the global One Health initiative in addition to promoting inclusive and collaborative learning, fostering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) exploration and discovery to empower learners of all ages to reach their full potential. The Conference Center provides more than 22,000 square feet of flexible meeting space with complimentary Wi-Fi and the requisite audio-visual equipment which will provide the necessary resources for a successful meeting.Planning Committee Members - Our planning committee consists of 22 accomplished professionals from six countries who embrace One Health as a key strategy in approaching complex human health, animal health, environmental health, and agriculture problems. The committee members are diverse in their disciplines, nationalities, gender, ethnicity, accomplishments, and institutions. The committee began meeting in January to develop the objectives and format for the meeting. As we continue to finalize the agenda others, especially from industry, may be asked to join the planning committee.A subset of this committee and some speakers will also be tasked with the scoring of submitted abstracts to determine travel awardees. An additional responsibility for a subset of the committee will be the review and awarding of poster prizes.