NABC: National Agricultural Biosecurity Center

K-State's NABC Solicits Interdiciplinary Solutions To Matters Of Agricultural Biosecurity

MANHATTAN—When you’re dealing with the safety of a nation’s food supply, it often takes a number of perspectives to develop a comprehensive plan.

That multidisciplinary approach is at the heart of all that Kansas State University’s National Agricultural Biosecurity Center does as it works to protect America’s agricultural infrastructure and economy from the threat of disease.

One way the center taps into a variety of perspectives is by holding a monthly forum to discuss a topic having to do with agricultural biosecurity. Presentations to date have been from the university disciplines one might expect—such as the center itself and the Food Science Institute—to those one might not think of, including computer science, geography and journalism.

“The forum is designed to bring people from across campus together to lend their perspective, and pick apart the complex issues facing agricultural biosecurity today,” said Marty Vanier, associate director of the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center. “From this office we try to reach out and touch everyone and anyone on campus and ask them for help.”

The next forum will be at 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 30, in Room 212 of the K-State Student Union. It will feature K-State’s Ludek Zurek on antibiotic resistance and food safety. Zurek, who has a joint appointment in the departments of entomology and diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, studies microbial ecology, particularly the ecology of food-borne and animal pathogens, the ecology and transfer of antibiotic resistance and virulence genes, and the insect and mammalian gastrointestinal microbial ecology.

“Antibiotic resistance is an ongoing concern when it comes to a safe and reliable food supply for the U.S.,” Vanier said. “Dr. Zurek will explain in detail why this development is so important and what critical steps are needed to keep the nation’s food supply safe. The hope is that other disciplines from the university can bring different perspectives on what needs to be done to bolster our defenses.”

Each forum gives faculty and staff from across the university a chance to hear about a particular aspect of agricultural biosecurity, and to offer their own professional insight into how to resolve the problems.

“At the center we’re not just talking about being interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, we’re doing it,” Vanier said. “ We’re talking the talk and walking the walk.”

The forum is open to the public. For more information, contact Justin Kastner at jkastner@k-state.edu or 785-532-4820.

News release prepared by: Katie Mayes, 785-532-6415, kmayes@k-state.edu

Confronting Zoonoses, Linking Human and Veterinary Medicine

A paper, “Confronting Zoonoses, Linking Human and Veterinary Medicine,” was published in the Center’s for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. This document can be viewed at the URL found below.

Comparative Study of Four States’ Public Health Systems

The final report of the “Comparative Study of Four States’ Public Health Systems: Survey Results from Local Health Departments, Physicians, and Veterinarians,” is available on the Princeton University Program on Science and Global Security website. The URL is listed below.

NOTE: To view the report from the Prinston site, click on the heading, “Final Report: A Comparative Study of Four States’ Public Health Systems: Survey Results from Local Health Departments, Physicians, and Veterinarians.”

K-State NABC Director Speaker At American Academy For Advancement of Science

MANHATTAN—David R. Franz, director of Kansas State University’s National Agricultural Biosecurity Center, gave a presentation on some of the vulnerabilities and threats to the nation’s livestock industry at a symposium on agricultural biosecurity, a part of the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, Feb. 15-19, in San Francisco.

Franz made his presentation, “Biosecurity: Protecting Our Livestock Industry,” Feb. 18.

Because animal populations are now more concentrated than ever before and are transported more widely, even internationally, few technical barriers exist to prevent the intentional introduction of highly infectious and contagious biological agents that could cause significant economic damage to the livestock industry, according to Franz.

“Protecting our herds and flocks from intentional disease is at once more difficult and it requires a different set of tools than we have used in our ongoing struggle with natural disease,” he said.

Franz, who also is the chief biological scientist at the Midwest Research Institute, has served as director of K-State’s National Agricultural Biosecurity Center since fall 2003. The center, which coordinates K-State’s interdisciplinary efforts in agricultural safety and security, is dedicated to protecting the nation’s agricultural infrastructure through planning and training for threats, whether natural or intentional.

Franz also has served as commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and has been deputy commander of the Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command.

He served as the chief inspector on three United Nations special commission biological warfare inspection missions to Iraq, and as a technical adviser on long-term monitoring. He also served as a member of the first two United States/United Kingdom teams that visited Russia in support of the Trilateral Joint Statement on Biological Weapons, and as a member of the Trilateral Experts’ Committee for biological weapons negotiations. In addition, he was technical editor for the Textbook of Military Medicine on Chemical and Biological Defense released in 1997.

Some of his current national-level committee appointments include the Defense Intelligence Agency Red Team Bio-Chem 2020, Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee for Research with Russian Biological Institutes, which he chairs. Franz also serves on the Kansas Bioscience Authority Board, the Dean’s Advisory Council of the College of Veterinary Medicine at K-State and is an adjunct professor in the college’s department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology.

Franz earned a D.V.M. from K-State and a Ph.D. in physiology from the Baylor College of Medicine.