Prof. Rob Bragg of the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the UFS, who is widely regarded as one of two world experts on poultry diseases such as infectious coryza, attended the American Federation of Aviculture Congress in Miami, Florida, in August 2005.
He shared with delegates methods for controlling diseases in captive bird species and the work done to develop a vaccine to control beak and feather disease virus.
Prof. Bragg was the only South African attending the congress. There are only a few researchers worldwide working on the virus, and the research work being done by the research teams at the UFS and the University of Cape Town is making a valuable contribution to the knowledge about this disease.
At the Association of Avian Veterinarians Congress held in Monterey,California, he discussed the work which had been done towardsinvestigating the antigenic and genotyping diversity of the beak andfeather disease virus. From the USA he flew to Turkey where he trained a group of veterinarians in biosecurity in the poultry industry. He also attended and addressed delegates at the World Veterinary Poultry Association Congress in Istanbul, which is the main gathering point for researchers involved in poultry diseases from around the world. Prof. Bragg is one of only two
researchers in South Africa who have ever presented research data on poultry at this highly prestigious congress.
In Turkey he also presented data on the disinfection programme which he developed over the last number of years. This concept has revolutionised disease control in the poultry industry and has been used successfully to control, amongst others, Newcastle Disease, in a number of countries around the world.
During this congress, he was asked to assist vaccine manufacturers in Israel, Italy and the USA with their infectious coryza vaccines and to develop a serological test for a company based in the Netherlands.
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