Naturally speaking. Hello and welcome to Naturally Speaking. I'm Lucy Gilbert. Today we'll be hearing about the Scottish Government's Centre of Expertise in Animal Disease outbreaks, or as we call it, EPIC, which is a consortium of several Scottish institutions, including staff from here at Glasgow University's School of Medical and Veterinary Life Sciences, including our very own Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Parasympitson.
With me here are Professor Dominic Miller, who is the Director of EPIC, and Theo Pepler, an Animal Movements Modeler. Welcome both of you to this Naturally Speaking Podcast. Dom, would you like to give us first a bit of background on EPIC and who is involved and the funders and the other partners, please? Sure, yeah, so EPIC is a collaboration between really all of the research institutions in Scotland that have got an interest in animal health.
That means really the FET schools in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and includes the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health, and Parasympitson here. It also includes Scottish Rural College, S-L-U-C, the Modern Research Institute in Edinburgh, the James Hutton Institute between Aberdeen and Dundee, which has a lot of interest in ecology and land use, and it includes Bios, which is Biomathematics and Statistics at Scotland. So there are a mix of scientists from all of those different places, some of whom commit a life report at their time, some of whom commit all of their time, and some of whom commit a small amount of their time. So who have we got from this Institute here, apart from me, I'm part of EPIC and Theo, who's with us today, who else is there?
Sabella Moore is also part of it, Louise Matthews is part of it, then there is me, and there are also Jen Grant, who's the project manager for the whole collaboration, and Kim Jones, who joined us very recently, and administrative role, who works here in part in the Institute as well. So EPIC is funded by the Scottish Government, and we do both primary research, but we also do a lot of knowledge exchange, and we help out the government in a real outbreak, don't we? So can you tell us more about how we juggle all those things, so what we do about rehearsing for real outbreaks? Sure, the idea behind this, I think, like many things that came out of the 2001 Foot Mouthe Disease outbreak was to have, really, pasty that could be called upon to think epidemiologically, and increasingly to combine multidisciplinary approaches to disease management control.
The emphasis is very much on exotic notifiable diseases, so for Scotland that pretty much means diseases we don't have almost all the time, but their huge threats to the national economy and to the farming industry. And to the rural economy as well, their impact is very widespread and very wide ranging if they happen. So what are these diseases? Well, so again, Foot Mouthe Disease, we mentioned in 2001, is a constant fear and particularly worrying, although our horizon scanning efforts suggest at the moment that it's reasonably far away continental Europe.
So Foot Mouthe is a big worry, I think, as much as anything, because it's multi-species, but we're very concerned, probably more concerned at the moment about it. And probably more concerned at the moment about African swine fever, which is moving around in Europe. We're concerned about classical swine fever. Our recent outbreak experiences have been with Avian Clewenza, and we've also had incursions into the UK in the last two years of Bluton in cattle, principally, but she got also very susceptible to that.
And then last summer was probably the worst on record in Europe for West Nile virus. Now, there's a lot of work done to look at the climatic and vector suitability of Scotland, and again, the risk assessment for the UK still suggests that it's relatively low probability. Nevertheless, part of our role is to horizon scan and contingency plan. So it does involve a synthesis of sort of blue sky, what-if kind of research, but trying very hard to make that relevant to current or proximal policy questions or policy needs.
And when I started off talking about this, 2001, I think, there was a huge demand on science to feed into immediate questions about the management of the outbreak. And so this is trying to be a bit proactive about that. And there's Avian Clewenza work that I picked up as well as some poultry work and some non-exotic disease work too. So, as I said before, the last-but exception of this one touching word, a few winters that have been in COSS into the UK, even if not widely into Scotland, because we're part of the UK and we're connected with the UK, then we have to think about that.
And obviously, one of the things that should be evident is that most of the time we don't have these diseases. So it's really useful to have datasets from diseases we do have, on which to sort of work out how the transmission routes work. So we use endemic disease in Scotland, particularly widely studied endemic disease, such as bovine viral diarrhea, virus, bovine tuberculosis, pig disease endemic sheep, and other species. And then pig disease and endemic sheep diseases and endemic poultry diseases to understand the transmission pathways.
A lot of those through animal movement networks, which I know that Theo's going to talk about, but there's also spatial spread and there's also spread through inanimate things, or animate things that we don't really think about in wildlife. So there's a lot of things to take into account and we can learn a lot from what's happening in endemic diseases that is broadly transferable. So Theo, you're one of Epic's animal movement modelers. Can you tell us a bit more about what you do?
My background is in statistics and I've focused on analysis of animal network or animal contact network data. So I work a lot with cattle movement data from the British cattle movement service, but we also have data on sheep movements. We have some databases on pigs, which I don't work on directly with some of my colleagues do, and a lot of my work currently involves stimulating disease spread for some exotic disease, like if indeed, or maybe some unknown exotic disease. So we have spread of that disease on the animal movement network and basically seeing what happens.
So those kind of models allow you then to play around with different sort of violence strategies to see how early you can detect it, how you can optimize surveillance strategies and also control strategy. So if there's a disease and you detect it on the network, you may be structured animal movement network in a way that makes the whole network of industry more robust against disease spread. So you work mainly with cattle and sheep movement data? I've started looking at sheep movement data as well, but from Sibelho, she focuses more on the sheep data.
They've got many similarities. You've got animals being moved in back to say biomarkers from one form to another or one her to another. So presumably it's very important for something like looking at a disease, which is a multi-species disease to look at both, or as many livestock species as you can simultaneously. So what we've seen is if you look at the cattle in isolation, you may be able to see that the disease plays in a certain way.
If you look at sheep in isolation, you see that the same kind of disease may be put in mouth disease with the same kind of parameters spread in a different way and then when you combine the networks, the species forms with multiple species on them, say both cattle and sheep. If you combine those networks, then the disease can spread in surprisingly different ways. So in this case, it's very important to consider not only species in isolation, but look at where the linking points between the different networks are often multi-species forms, but also places like markets. If there's any interaction between the different species in markets, I know that they have different market days and different markets, but sometimes they might be links between these two networks that as a consequence, you'd have a much bigger outbreak than if you consider say only cattle only sheep in isolation.
So it's part of your work identifying key premises and how infection will spread out from a key premises to the wider landscape and different farms. So currently I'm doing a lot of work on identifying the key premises for infectious disease spread. As I said, looking at cattle alone. And the questions are, for example, what makes a premises key or what makes a specific form?
So what does make it too complex to say? It depends a lot on what's important to you really. And I think for policy makers, it might be important to know what the size of the outbreak would be, how many different premises would be affected than the outbreak, how many animals would be infected. If there's an outbreak that starts from a particular premises, once the risk of its spreading is 80-20 different other farms and causing a huge epidemic.
So those kind of probabilities and absolutely number of infected animals infected farms, those are the kind of statistics I'm looking at. And in the simulation model to study that I would just seed infection from many different premises in Scotland, all of them actually, but not at the same time. And then to see how the infection spreads. Obviously I look at cattle alone, but once you bring in the sheep data as well, there are things looking a bit different.
So different premises might be key to infection spread. And presumably it changes at different times of years. So you might have a premises that's key at one time of year and then it's completely safe for less than a year. Yeah, so that's where I start to see in my models as well.
Some premises are probably to cause large outbreaks in springtime or lead to large outbreaks in the network. And then in autumn, they might not play a role at all. But we expect that has to do with different types of movements happening at different times of the year, so the network changes dynamically throughout the year. But that also means if you want to say target premises based on the keenness for surveillance targets and surveillance programs, the specific farm doesn't say high risk throughout the year.
It might be high risk every year at springtime, but the farmers high risk in March or April are the same one that's high risk in September or October. So what I've started to see in my experiments is that for highly infectious, fast-moving diseases like F&D or similar kind of diseases, it seems that the specific animal movements that are always involved in affects the disease risk much more than the particular characteristics of the farm itself. So for example, herb size or management type or even type of capital, or type of capital will be associated with the movements or the timing of the movements in the area. So does that mean that an individual farms via security measures might not actually protect it as much as you might think?
If risk depends on all these other factors out with the farm? Well, that might be a dangerous thing to say. So I want to say bias-security measures won't protect it. It's just bias-security measures aren't effective at play.
So maybe the solution is to improve bias-security measures of all the farms that are maybe high risk at any time of the year, and that might be a good way to target investment in the industry rather than just the same level of bias-security over all farms. Because obviously bias-security is there to help that farm protect itself, but if there's other factors at play as well, you might need to hone the policy or the bias-security strategy is a bit better. Yeah, I think that's right. If you understand the drivers to these behaviours, some of them are driven by markets.
So we have some economists who are looking at one of the market incentives for farmers to move animals in particular ways, particular times. But we know that that's not the only sort of explaining factor. I've worked with economists all my career and I know that colleagues have tried very clever economic experiments with farmers and they don't explain all their behaviour. So there's quite a lot of other stuff that isn't just economics that is fundamental to what farmers choose to do and not to do.
And that's why we have people at James' Institute who are social scientists trying to sort of get an insight into that. So the farmers' actual behaviour at the individual level? So including their attitude to bias-security and their sort of economic incentives, but it becomes quite complicated to the mix. But I think it really does begin to get out.
If you really want to have a policy that makes a difference to some of the situations that videos work, describes and allows you to essentially play with, because you can simulate, it's an iterative process and you can run lots of different trials, then if you can understand as much as possible about what's driving it, then you have a better chance of getting something that actually has an efficacy in the event of a problem. So in that case, does Epic's research have a direct impact on policy? Do we have good contacts in Scottish Government and we actually do impact policy? Definitely it does.
I mean, lots of examples are happening. So we work very closely with all of the policy team in Scottish Government Animal Health and Welfare Division who work for the Chief Fed. And so some of the work that Cevilla's been doing has been looking at movement stand-stills, which is a policy response to disease transmission between farms going back as far as 2001 and the food and the food and the disease outbreak. So any farmer that brings susceptible species on cannot move animals off that premises within 13 days if it's cattle and sheep 21 days if it's pigs.
Really to sort of mitigate the sort of silent incubation and then moving on and on and on. But it's trade restricted from a farmer's point of view and unpopular. And of course, people's memory of 2001 fades, perhaps even last generation. So being able to show one of the fields models about how disease spreads and how it doesn't spread with a certain movement standstill is very powerful knowledge exchange with industry and with policy.
And so it helps a lot because it shows people what could happen and why the policy is there. But it also allows us to review the policy and say, okay, was that like the time really necessary? Could you get away with a bit less? What's the trade off?
And what about if there is an actual outbreak next week supposing foot and mouth disease hits the UK again? Will Epic play a role? Definitely. So we're written into all of the Scottish Government's exotic disease control plans.
So these are official documents. And so yes, we will be brought in at a very early stage, at least in terms of being informed. And we have a kind of emergency response mode of working, which we rehearsed as recently as last year when we took part in the UK-wide exercise called exercise blackthorn, which was about simulated from mouth disease outbreak. And we took part in our exercise for eight days from day one to day eight, which is longer than anybody else did.
And that allowed us to test the kind of things the Government would ask us to do and demonstrate that we could do them in the time scales, which Government would require them for them to make a difference or to have a chance of making a difference to how they're deciding to operate. So is that Epic's animal movement model is suddenly going right? We've got to run all these models. There's been an outbreak at FarmX in wherever and we'll see how fast the spread is and where it will go depending on the parameters that have been given.
Is that how the sort of practice will work? Yes, I mean, the theory is done at least in an exercise, so he's probably best to talk about it. Yeah, the work in that kind of scenario is quite different. It's exciting for the workers, but it's also you're under a lot of pressure to get things done for quite short deadlines.
So a lot of the work that people do in outbreak situations is to do tracking of animals in the contact network, trying to help people on the ground from APHA and the animal health and plant agency to follow up with different contexts and network control the disease. But it also has to do with some other main mission of involved in veterinary risk assessments. So Scottish Government, for example, would ask a very short, short notice veterinary risk assessment of what's the risk for the disease spread of people having access to the countryside in the saw that area. Other questions might be for low risk areas for the disease spread.
Could they left, for example, movement bands? If there was a countrywide movement band, but they left movement bands in that way. Now the industry is getting along, not freeze everything. So Scottish Government did in the exercise and I think in the real outbreak would rely heavily on the input of Epic when it's side, what the policy would be for other deal with the questions as they come up.
So the work is very different. It sounds very responsible as well. If farmers could lose livelihoods over what Epic suggests the government should do. Yeah, it is a very important role in graduate responsibility.
I think the work of the work that the modeler do in the in the outbreak suggestion itself is more to do with contact tracing. What does that mean? Contact tracing? So you're infected cow has been on farm A and then moved to farm B and then to farm C, then you just trace back in time in the animal movement record and see which other animals may have been in contact with this one and therefore may have been infected.
And therefore have the risk of spreading the infection further on to other places. So before we wind up, Dom, what's it like being the director and coordinating a large central expertise with partners all over Scotland, multi-disciplinary work and having to manage these practice sessions in case they're not breaking up, potentially a real outbreak. What's it like for you? It's brilliant.
It's a magic job. I really, really love it. It's a huge privilege. The best bits are the different sciences coming together and then working really closely with policy and seeing it work.
But it's tricky. I mean, I think that the hard things are a lot of it's really about kind of diplomacy and just making sure that people are a lot of times communicating with each other properly. It's a huge network. Inevitably, there are communication issues and you could spend the entire time communicating and still not really understand precisely who's doing what.
So my role is really to sort of act as a go-between and make sure that at least somebody understands reasonably well what all the different bits are and making connections. It's one of those things that you difficult to describe, how you do it. You sort of can't stop doing it. Although I'm not entirely sure that people would notice it.
Oh, sure. That's not the case. Anyway, Dom and CO, thank you both so much for taking the time to speaking us today about the Scottish Government's Centre of Expertise in Animal Disease outbreaks or EPIC. And thanks for listening us for tuning in to this Naturally Speaking Podcast.
Goodbye. Thanks for listening to the Naturally Speaking Podcast. If you've got any ideas for future shows or want to get involved, please contact us. We'd love to hear from you.
Our email address is naturallyspeakingpodcast.com. Naturally Speaking is a podcast from the Institute of Diversity, Animal Health and the University of Glasgow. For more information, you can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter at theNSpodcast and you can download future episodes and find more information at our blog at www.natterekspeakingpodcast.webpress.com