Sharing - it's a good thing

“If you sequence a virus and you leave it in the drawers for three years, you might as well not sequence it,” says Ilaria Capua, the Italian virologist and director of the OIE/FAO Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie in Italy.

Seed Magazine, that very stylish ‘Science is Culture’ publication, recently named Capua as of one of its Revolutionary Minds for 2008.

Capua is the first veterinarian to be included in this list of opinion leaders in the scientific world.

"Revolutionary Minds: Ilaria Capua" View the video (4:39 mins) Visit the website Capua's small act of rebellion was just the spark for a much larger challenge to the system

She is outstanding because of her efforts in sharing avian influenza data within the scientific community through GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data).

This is remarkable because some sectors of the scientific community, especially the private ones, are not known for wanting to move beyond patents, copyrights and subscriptions.

Capua tells Seed: “I think if you have a big impending threat of concern to human and animal health, then there is no time to keep the information to yourself.

“The system that was up and running at the time wasn’t suitable for the health threat. Hundreds of sequences were generated and were not made available to a larger community of scientists. So I just said: ‘My virus is going into Genbank. Full stop.’

“I actually sent an email to quite a lot of my colleagues saying: ‘I invite you to think about this because there isn’t any space, at least in my opinion, for keeping information in drawers.’”

Patenting the genetic sequence of living organisms has always been tricky. On one hand, the private outfits that spend so much money on such projects want to see some return on investment for all their hard work. Well, you’ve got to pay your bills somehow.

Capua admitted: “The problem with Genbank is that it doesn’t give the depositor any sort of ownership in the protection of intellectual property.”

But on the other hand, some argue that this act is no more different to the way the imperial naval ships behaved during the era of gunboat diplomacy barely three centuries ago.

It’s like Captain James Cook, who, upon discovering New Zealand (after the Maoris, of course), saying to the Spaniards, the Dutch, the French et al: “Alright, guys. My route to New Zealand from Europe is my copyright. If you want to come here, you’ll have to find your own route.”

When I put forward this analogy to a few scientists, one said it doesn’t matter – eventually you’ll find the report or paper on the DNA sequence on some free data-sharing online portal anyway. Another scientist said that some of these efforts have been upheld by the EU law.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million. So in response to the comments made by the two scientists, I only have this animation below to illustrate my point:

"Share by Habib Yazdi" View the video (0:53 mins) This Flash animation by Habib Yazdi, a senior communication studies major at University of Carolina, was named the winner of the SPARKY Awards in January 2008

Keeping track of problems

A research flock at the US Sheep Experiment Station near Dubois, Idaho, USA. Unlike their USA counterparts, the EU member states still disagree over the implementation of sheep and goat tags Photo: USDA

Nobody asked for electricity when it was invented. Thanks to marketing and powerful lobbying, electricity is now something both businesses and consumers can’t do without.

Not all technological innovations have been that lucky, though.

Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, has been trying to make an inroad into animal health for quite some time.

While it has succeeded in penetrating the retail sector, via supermarkets and to a certain extent, pharmaceuticals, it still has to justify its existence to agricultural groups and packaging sectors that are still comfortable with low-tech identification (ID) techniques, such as barcode labelling.

Digital Angel’s announcement to restructure its Destron Fearing animal ID business shortly after receiving approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its swine livestock identification tag system does not come as a shock, given the current financial climate in the US and the various issues plaguing animal ID and RFID in general.

As you would know, the European Union (EU) requires all sheep and goats across the European Union to be electronically tagged by the end of 2010 (Regulation 21/2004). Tagging the animals will not stop the disease. What it can do is to help the relevant authorities to monitor the movement of livestock through the supply chain, and hopefully identifies the source of an outbreak when the proverbial hits the fan.

The sheep industry leads the resistance to "double-tagging" in the UK, it is alleged Photo: DirectGovKids

The proverbial finally hit the fan this month. A small bluetongue outbreak occured in the southeast of Germany. A few days after this incident, which took place in the Ortenaukreis district, near the French border, the disease was identified in Portugal. Spain is monitoring the situation closely.

In January this year, Spain and Italy made their unhappiness clear when the mandatory tagging of livestock was postponed from the end of 2009 to the end of 2010 (EU extends electronic ID deadline for sheep and goats to January 2010, 8th January 2008). Despite the technical and financial obstacles, Spain and Italy committed a significant amount of resources at national level to prepare for the 2009 deadline.

They found the excuses put forward by other member states who ‘failed’ to meet the deadline simply “unacceptable”.

The UK, egged on by the sheep industry, welcomed the postponement.

I suppose the Southern Europeans have a valid reason in supporting an automated animal monitoring process. The geography makes the spread of the unwanted – and I am not just talking about animal diseases – a tad easier in the region than in an isolated island like the British Isle. Meat products are a major revenue earner for Spain and Italy, so they can’t afford to mess up.

The story, however, is slightly different in the UK, where living and operating costs are ridiculously high. An animal tagging system integrator told me that the resistance against the 21/2004 regulation “is being led by the sheep industry in its fight against double-tagging”.

Bluetongue up close: Hyperaenia of the oral cavity and oedema of the mucous membranes Photo: Crown Copyright/DEFRA

“Double-tagging” is a peculiar issue, and it doesn’t help the RFID cause one bit. The 21/2004 directive requires all sheep to be double-tagged in any event when leaving holding of birth. From January 2008, one of the tags must be an electronic device. Individual recording of livestock will also be compulsory.

Again, if you have hundreds of sheep, you have little choice but to do this electronically. Setting up a new electronic record-keeping system costs money. To muddle matters further, the 21/2004 directive gives a further derogation that “lambs” (yes, baby sheep) leaving their holding of birth do not require an electronic device.

Before you come to the conclusion that lamb-tagging is daft, I'll have you know that the UK's Institute of Animal Health (IAH) thinks bluetongue virus can be passed by pregnant ruminants to the foetuses they carry. IAH reckons that's how it survives the winter (Bluetongue virus might survive the winter within foetuses, 5th March 2008).

The same chap told me that the beef industry, very much spooked by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), supports electronic tagging. It’s the sheep farmers that are throwing the spanners in the works.

So how much does an average tagging system cost then, I asked.

“A handheld reader starts from £60. A slaughter line is from about £2500, and a livestock market system with multireaders, £10,000. Tags are priced from £0.16 to £0.85 per piece.”

(No) thanks to global warming, midges can survive the Northern European winter and spread the disease all year round. Isn't it time the animal health industry stops compensating for other industries' greenhouse activities, and do something to reduce carbon emission in agriculture? Photo: Institute of Animal Health

If it’s true that the basic cost of the EU scheme to the UK farmer would be between £13,000 and £16,000 – according to DEFRA – and if it’s true that the average UK farmer is earning below £15,000 a year, then both the sheep industry and the animal tagging industry can kiss each other goodbye. With about 67 million sheep movements a year, how could the sheep farmers cope with the costs? And let’s not forget the rising feed costs.

Animal tagging is a novel idea, one that I support wholeheartedly. But like many types of technology, it needs to be supported by a justifiable business strategy. The much-touted Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) has been around for more than 10 years, but hey, if you can organise a knees-up with good old text messaging, why need WAP? Similarly, if you can get by with good old head-counting and low-tech ID methods, why bother upgrading?

But if we have a reliable tracking and tracing system in place, it will be a lot easier to know where to look first when the diseases strike again.

Talk is cheap, and effective

"Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market."

Those are stern words from The Cluetrain Manifesto, the digital marketing bible, but judging from the latest survey released by Fleischman-Hillard, there is a whole lot of truth in them.

The survey, conducted in association with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), basically says three things:

1. Word of mouth is the new advertising.
2. The corporate marketing practice of accentuating the positive and burying the negative is confusing and boring the consumers.
3. The market is cleverer than you think.

Out of 2000 veterinary professionals surveyed last December, only 10% relied on information from consumer-oriented websites about pet care. A whopping 65% didn't buy web-based information from veterinary supply and equipment manufacturers.

Instead, they'd rather go to the websites of veterinary associations, veterinary school or research organizations, and veterinary clinic or animal hospital. About 78% expressed confidence in information gained from veterinary schools and research institutions.

What it means is that the veterinary community is a highly networked community. They trust peer recommendations, but they are highly sceptical of companies.

The survey also claims that 'most veterinarians said that online information confused their clients'.

It doesn't take a clever person to figure out that a brochure website littered with lengthy corporate goobledygook and boring jargons is not doing the business any favour. Consumers don't get them, vets don't like them.

In October last year, we covered the Veterinary Marketing Association (VMA)’s seminar on e-communication. One of the speakers, Mr Felix Velarde of Underwired (pictured), told the audience: "If you can prove your point in a few web pages, why do you need pages and pages of text to promote your products?”

During a coffee break, I asked him what he thought of animal health websites in general. His answer wasn't flattering, but it could be interpreted as 'could do better'.

In an effort to control the message to consumers, some companies sacrifice clarity and creativity. Bad briefs breed boring results. And the results - corporate speak and dull design - are off-putting. Sure, companies spend lots of money trying to get the right message across about their products to the right people, but they can't control how they are perceived anymore in the new media landscape.

So what to do? According to the Cluetrain, companies should start talking to their market. "The community of discourse is the market," it says. "Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die." Don’t just look over the trees to find an equally big competition, it says. The internet revolution is “bottom-up”. Look down to your feet. That is where the community is.

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