Recipient Organization
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
ITHACA,NY 14853
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
This project is to study and support the responsiveness and readiness of the AHDC in a regional or national high- impact disease outbreak in livestock and poultry. Such outbreaks affect the economic viability of animal and food industries and public health. The AHDC will support a national system to not only detect a first instance of foreign animal or emerging disease, but also provide the capacity to scale up testing activities to provide the testing backbone for all disease control, eradication and post outbreak surveillance, and to enhance and/or develop tests and work processes to effectively respond to such emergencies. With more than 240 faculty and staff who in NYS fiscal year 2024, processed more than 300,000 accessions for more than 7,000 veterinary accounts from all states and territories of the Union and from abroad, the AHDC has the expertise and infrastructure to be a Level 1 laboratory in the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN).
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Goals and objectives of this project include providing and maintaining expertise and infrastructure for detecting high- impact animal disease and disease agents. The AHDC has been designated a Level 1 laboratory in the NAHLN based on its accreditation status, infrastructure and functional laboratory information management system, its high level of emergency preparedness, surveillance capabilities and continuous surveillance output, the value and level of animal commodities in its service areas, and its active organizational contribution to the network.
Project Methods
The AHDC offers a comprehensive array of assays and platforms in all diagnostic domains under AAVLD accreditation and for select assays in virology, bacteriology, serology and molecular diagnostics under A2LA ISO 17025 accreditation to test foranimal disease agents and disease. In particular, for this project, the AHDC molecular diagnostics, virology and histopathology laboratories have implemented the NAHLN standardized tests for diseases that affect or have the potential to affect livestock and poultry in the Northeast, including influenza and exotic Newcastle disease, classical and African swine fevers, chronic wasting disease and scrapie, foot and mouth disease, and swine influenza. The AHDC in addition, has expanded its whole genome sequencing capabilities for detection of emerging diseases and support of epidemiologic investigations. The AHDC is set up to test for animal SARS-CoV-2 infection in all animal species by PCR, serology and sequencing. The AHDC is currently activated in the national response to the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak, testing for NY and surrounding states, as well as for the USDA APHIS Wildbird HPAI Surveillance Program. The AHDC Virology laboratory, in addition, through its exploratory sequencing capabilities first identified HPAI in dairy and now is redeploying its high throughput high complexity testing workflows that it had developed for SARS-CoV-2 testing of human samples. The AHDC, furthermore, in the past and in the context of this current project, is actively pursuing enhanced electronic communication tools to message testing data to its federal partners in Veterinary Services. The AHDC also participates in regional and national emergency preparedness exercises and is set to respond.