Tackling emerging and re-emerging livestock diseases in Europe : [Conference report]

TO be tackled effectively, emerging and re-emerging diseases in livestock need to be identified quickly – but how do you go about finding what is causing disease? This was the question posed by Martin Beer, of the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) in Germany, during the plenary session at the annual conference of the Association for Veterinary Teaching and Research Work (AVTRW) held in Nottingham last month. The clinical signs of different diseases could be very similar, said Professor Beer, so it was vital to take samples to identify the disease and work out if it was an emerging or a re-emerging disease.