News Archive

ILRI News

International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists: A Mongolian proposal to the UN for 2026

Written by Cynthia Mugo (ILRI) and Lavinia Scudiero (GASL) . Milking yaks in the highlands of China (photo credit: Marc Foggin/iyrp.info) . In Aug 2019, the Mongolian Government began to petition the United Nations to declare an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) to increase...

ILRI News

Remembering Michael Blümmel

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Michael Blümmel , a principal scientist and deputy program leader in the feed and forage development program at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Michael passed away on Monday, 12 Oct 2020, after a short illness in his...

ILRI clippings

How viable are schemes to give poor people making and selling ‘informal’ milk greater market access?

Artworks on this page: Various Jugs, by Katie Grobler. A new re port from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) reviews the effectiveness of training and certification schemes designed to give small-scale ‘...

ILRI clippings

‘Genomic time travel’ for better African cattle—New paper describes a ‘rich mosaic of traits’ and an ‘evolutionary jolt’

Scientists from ILRI, Korea and other partners have discovered a new set of genetic markers in African cattle that signal beneficial characteristics, with a view to harnessing them for future generations. ‘In a multi-national collaborative effort, scientists have announced the discovery of a new...

ILRI clippings

More on why outright banning of ‘wet markets’ (while ‘giving virologists the heebie-jeebies’) won’t work

Pork handling at Wambizzi Pig Cooperative Society, Uganda’s only centralized pig abattoir (photo credit: ILRI/Danilo Pezo). Liam Taylor, a reporter for The Economist , recently interviewed Uganda-based food safety experts at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and at Uganda’s...

ILRI clippings

Ivan Morrison, of the University of Edinburgh, formerly of ILRAD, awarded the inaugural Plowright Prize for his lifelong research towards a vaccine for East Coast fever

RCVS Knowledge, the charity partner of the UK’s Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, has awarded its inaugural Plowright Prize to Professor William Ivan Morrison of the University of Edinburgh for his research combating the cattle disease East Coast fever. Ivan Morrison started his career at the...

ILRI clippings

Wildlife markets in the pandemic: Prohibit or preserve them? Ban or promote them?

Pork sold in a wet market in Cambodia (photo credit: ILRI/David Aronson). ILRI and UN experts say preserve and protect the world’s ‘informal markets’ AND invest and enhance these markets, which provide billions of people with food and incomes. An opinion piece by ILRI scientist Kristina Roesel and...

ILRI clippings

A call for a holistic view of meat eating by Lawrence Haddad, of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition

Standing Rib, by Roy Lichtenstein, 1962. ‘Eat less meat’ is seen by many as a way of improving the health of the planet and its people. But the issue isn’t quite so simple—at least where the nutrition security and livelihoods of millions of people in the Global South are concerned. A call for a...

ILRI News

‘Invisible livestock’ – On the central roles of working horses, donkeys and mules on the smallholder farms that feed the world

By Klara Saville (Brooke), Carine Bambara, Anna Marry (both Brooke ) , Brian Perry (University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford). A Honduran maize and bean farmer and his horse (photo credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer). According to World Bank data, 80% of the 770 million people living in extreme...

ILRI News

Tribute to Azage Tegegne, leading Ethiopian livestock scientist

It is with as much shock as sorrow that we report the untimely death of Azage Tegegne, a leading Ethiopian livestock scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) who retired from ILRI just last June after more than 30 years of distinguished service to the institute. Azage died...

ILRI clippings

Inalienable imperative—More, and more sustainable, meat, milk, eggs and fish for more than one billion people

A new scientific article from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems judiciously pushes back against some of the on-going anti-livestock rhetoric appearing in Western media. The new paper has four big messages: Meat, offal, milk, eggs and fish are vital to—and missing from—the...

ILRI News

Two animated shorts on practical steps to improve animal welfare and reduce drug resistance in poor countries

Start this new year (and decade) right. Watch these two little animated films for practical advice on how to prevent both animal suffering and the spread of drug-resistant germs infecting people and livestock. First up, Animal Welfare, a 5-minute video short (in English, with Swahili captions)...