Animal health: harmonisation and distribution of pathogen detection and differentiation tools

Quality and safe meat production and livestock husbandry are important foci for addressing the wider underlying economic and political challenges. In the last few years, an intense focus of the scientific community has been placed on breakouts of livestock diseases especially in Asia, which have spread into neighbouring countries including Europe. These outbreaks had a serious impact on the livelihood of the farmers as well as the economy of the affected countries. Given this, the establishment of a network of diagnostic facilities is a great demand both at the national and regional levels. In most of the cases, diagnostic assays are either not available or they are not validated. The aim of this collaborative network was to: 1 Distribute and harmonize diagnostic tools required for pathogen detection and differentiation. 2 Build the capacity to ensure the conduction of integrated disease control measures.