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Livestock economist and information specialist |
Andrew James, previous Director of VEERU, has more than 20 years research
and consultancy experience in livestock production and disease control in
Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin
America.
Dr James has established veterinary epidemiology units in Africa and Latin
America and developed a variety of computer software for the management of
livestock information. VEERU’s programme of
research in livestock herd modelling began with the steady state model
developed by Dr James for his PhD, and widely used for project and
farm-level economic evaluation. He has led a series of research projects
developing simulation models for rinderpest, BSE and smallholder livestock
enterprises.
Dr James led the development of the InterHerd computer program, which was
designed for herd management in Latin America and replaced the DAISY herd
management system in the United Kingdom.
Since 2001 he has overseen the development of a national livestock database
system ‘Intertrace’. This system provides a framework for establishing
effective recording of the identification, movement, production and official
health records for any species of livestock.
Identification and registration in Intertrace complies with EU legislation
and incorporates registration of holdings and keepers for all livestock
species; identification and registration of livestock; recording and
management of veterinary surveillance programmes; management of EU livestock
headage payment schemes; recording of animal products and border
inspections;
milk recording records; milk producing forecasting; cattle breed society
records and genetic evaluation; beef QA, traceability and labelling.
The system was first introduced into Malta where it is
recognized
by EU as a fully operational database for livestock. It is used in UK by
National Milk Records (NMR)
to analyse NMR milk recording data
collected monthly from in excess of 8,000 commercial dairy herds. The
database contains over 23 million animal records and data analyses are used
to predict future milk flows for individual herds as well as groups of herds
and assist milk buyers to determine appropriate milk utilisation strategies
for the predicted volumes that will be collected from farms.
Dr James has introduced Interherd to Colombia where it is being used to
store animal registers of
all the
major breed societies in the country. Dr James has also introduced
Intertrace into Luxembourg, Guernsey, Antigua, Trinidad and Suriname.
Dr James has been a regular contributor to FAO and OIE Expert consultations,
particularly with reference to the control of transboundary diseases,
disease surveillance and disease modelling. He is a member of the advisory
committee for the FAO Emergency Programme for the Prevention of
Transboundary Diseases (EMPRES), and was a member of the expert groups that
developed epidemiological surveillance standards for declaring countries
free of rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia and foot-and-mouth
disease.
Dr James is currently leading the implementation of
an EU
supported twinning project between The University of Reading and
the Food and Veterinary
Regulation Division (FVRD) of the Ministry for Rural Affairs and
Environment, Republic of Malta. The project is assisting in regulating food
safety, animal welfare and environmental standards in Malta by providing
technical assistance to ensure that FVRD is in compliance with EU food
safety and animal welfare legislation. The twinning project will improve
the organisational and individual capacities of the FVRD and the livestock
industry to apply more effective controls to ensure that the standards
required by EU legislation are achieved throughout the livestock industries.
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