Sustainable smallholder poultry interventions to promote food security and social, agricultural, and ecological resilience in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia.

In Zambia's Luangwa Valley, highly variable rainfall and lack of education, agricultural inputs, and market access constrain agricultural productivity, trapping smallholder farmers in chronic poverty and food insecurity. Human and animal disease (e.g. HIV and Newcastle Disease, respectively), further threaten the resilience of poor families. To cope with various shocks and stressors, many farmers employ short-term coping strategies that threaten ecosystem resilience. Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) utilizes an agribusiness model to alleviate poverty and food insecurity through conservation farming, market development and value-added food production. COMACO promotes household, agricultural and ecological resilience along two strategic lines: improving recovery from shocks (mitigation) and reducing the risk of shock occurrence. Here we focus on two of COMACO's poultry interventions and present data showing that addressing health and management constraints within the existing village poultry system resulted in significantly improved productivity and profitability. However, once reliable productivity was achieved, farmers preferred to sell chickens rather than eat either the birds or their eggs. Sales of live birds were largely outside the community to avoid price suppression; in contrast, the sale of eggs from community-operated, semi-intensive egg production facilities was invariably within the communities. These facilities resulted in significant increases in both producer income and community consumption of eggs. This intervention therefore has the potential to improve not only producers' economic resilience, but also resilience tied to the food security and physical health of the entire community.

Molecular characterization of a poxvirus isolated from an American flamingo (Phoeniconais ruber rubber).

An avian poxvirus from the beak scab of an American flamingo (Phoeniconais ruber rubber) was isolated by inoculation on the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) of specific-pathogen-free (SPF) chicken embryos. The virus produced multifocal areas of epithelial hyperplasia along with foci of inflammation in the CAM, and rare cells contained small eosinophilic intracytoplasmic bodies. Chickens inoculated with the isolated virus in the feather follicle of the leg did not develop significant lesions. Nucleotide sequence comparison of a PCR-amplified 4.5 kb HindIII fragment of the genome of flamingo poxvirus (FlPV) revealed very high homology (99.7%) with condor poxvirus (CPV), followed by approximately 92% similarity with canary poxvirus (CNPV) and Hawaiian goose poxvirus (HGPV), but less similarity (approximately 69%) to fowl poxvirus (FPV), the type species of the genus Avipoxvirus of family Poxviridae. As in the cases with CPV, CNPV, and HGPV, genetic analysis of FlPV revealed an absence of three corresponding FPV open reading frames (ORF199, 200, and 202) and an absence of any reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV) sequences in this region. There are only nine nucleotide substitutions observed between FlPV and CPV in the 4.5 kb fragment; those were clustered in the ORF201 region, which in FPV genome is a site for integration of REV sequences. Phylogenetic analysis of the predicted amino acid sequences of the ORF201-coded hypothetical protein demonstrated FlPV to be more closely related to CPV, as well as to CNPV and HGPV, than to FPV.

Sarcomas and myelocytomas induced by a retrovirus related to myeloblastosis-associated virus type 1 in White Leghorn egg layer chickens.

An outbreak of subcutaneous sarcomas in commercial White Leghorn egg layers was observed in the northeastern United States during late 2004. Subcutaneous tumors were confined to three flocks distributed in two locations and belonging to the same company. The tumors were first observed grossly by farm personnel at approximately 7 wk of age and persisted throughout the economic life of the flocks. Most of the tumors observed during the growing period were present on the facial region or around the head, wings, and legs. There was no gross evidence of bursal or visceral involvement. Microscopically, most tumors were undifferentiated sarcomas and myxomas. There was no microscopic evidence of Marek's disease or lymphoid leukosis. Reticuloendotheliosis virus proviral DNA was not detected by polymerase chain reaction either in tumors or in cell cultures. Egg production and mortality rates were within normal limits in the affected flocks and many of the chickens exhibiting tumors seemed healthy otherwise, albeit approximately one-half of the daily mortality exhibited tumors. Avian myeloblastosis-associated virus type 1 (MAV-1) was isolated from tumors, plasma, and serum. Upon initial virus neutralization, the viruses isolated seemed at least partially related antigenically to avian leukosis virus (ALV) subgroups A and B but not to subgroup J (ALV-J). Sequencing of the variable and hypervariable regions of gp85 in the envelope gene revealed that the viruses involved are closely related to MAV-1. Attempts to reproduce subcutaneous sarcomas with MAV-1 isolated from White Leghorn chickens in the case herein reported produced exclusively myelocytomas indistinguishable histologically from those induced by ALV-J in meat type chickens.