Features
Flying Away Home
Arrival of epidemiologist gives wings to plans to strengthen U of G's poultry research
BY ANDREW VOWLES
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| Prof. Michele Guerin is working closely with the Poultry Industry Council in her new position. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
When Prof. Michele Guerin, Population Medicine, was a wannabe vet growing up in Burlington, she had all kinds of animals at home — dogs, guinea pigs, fish, turtles. But not as many as she would have liked: her dad was allergic to cats, for example. And she never had any birds.
Today as a recently hired faculty member at her alma mater, Guerin will have access to all the birds she can handle. Beginning this winter, the epidemiologist's faculty position is being sponsored by the Poultry Industry Council of Canada (PIC). That organization, representing producers of broiler and breeder chickens, egg layers and turkeys, is keen to help strengthen U of G's poultry research and teaching programs. The industry is worth about $9.5 billion a year in Canada, with 40 per cent of that based in Ontario.
“I will be working closely with the Poultry Industry Council to make sure my research fits in with issues of importance to the industry,” says Guerin, a former practising veterinarian who started her faculty position in December after completing her PhD last year.
Those issues include food safety, animal welfare and biosecurity (disease management on and off the farm). Whether it's studying ways to raise Campylobacter-free broiler chickens or investigating the health of cage-raised birds, she expects to help the PIC address its recently revamped research priorities.
She'll work with the council's poultry program team, which includes poultry specialists from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs as well as Profs. Shayan Sharif, Pathobiology, and Grégoy Bédécarrats, Animal and Poultry Science.
The team plans to support Ontario's poultry industry through studies and teaching in poultry health and welfare, production and management, economic and environmental issues, and food quality and safety. Much of that PIC-funded research involves faculty in the Ontario Veterinary College and the Ontario Agricultural College.
Tim Nelson, executive director of the Arkell-based PIC, says the industry needs experts to help understand disease outbreaks and control their spread. A 2004 outbreak of avian flu in British Columbia cost that province's poultry industry about $350 million.
“They're still cleaning up after the last outbreak in Saskatchewan,” says Nelson, referring to a bird flu strain found on a farm in that province last year. “The time for recovery is huge.”
Guerin also belongs to Guelph's Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses. Based at OVC, the centre brings together campus researchers and external agencies to study animal diseases that affect public health, such as avian flu, SARS and West Nile virus.
“This is where I wanted to be — I love the University and OVC,” says Guerin, who was completing her doctorate here more or less as the PIC was posting its requirements for a poultry epidemiologist.
She hopes to conduct the kinds of studies she got involved in during her PhD with retired professor Wayne Martin. Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they studied Campylobacter in Iceland, which had suffered a disease outbreak in humans in the late 1990s .
Based in the capital, Reykjavik, in June 2004, Guerin visited numerous broiler chicken farms to observe practices and pinpoint problems. She says some farmers have altered practices based on their work, including paying more attention to drinking-water treatment and farm hygiene as well as slaughtering chickens at a younger age.
She also worked with Martin on her master's degree, studying Salmonella bacteria in chickens, turkeys, cattle and pigs in Alberta. That work combined animal and human health as well, as Guerin looked for connections between clusters of cases in people and animals.
As a Guelph DVM student in the early 1990s, she planned not to study but to practise. And that's what she did after graduating in 1993, working in small-animal clinics in southern Ontario. She enjoyed surgery and practice, especially advising clients in ways that often helped save animals' lives. “I really felt like I made an impact.”
At the same time, some things had become too routine in the clinic. And the practitioner felt disheartened whenever she ran across a pet owner who didn't share her own feeling for the animal. Now preparing her research and teaching program here at Guelph, she expects to find herself back in the field.
Today she still has no pet birds at home. She's been without a pet for a year ever since her cat, Zoey, died at age 15. Glancing at a photo of the black and white cat in her office, she says: “It's taken that long before I can think about getting another one.”
In her spare time, she keeps busy with sports, especially hockey in a women's league in Guelph. Her position? A winger, naturally.