International Symposium on One Health Research: Food Security, Sustainability, and Resilience

It is evident from the recent COVID-19 pandemic, frequent large-scale food-borne outbreaks, and the current highly pathogenic avian influenza epizootic that many human and animal disease problems are inextricably linked. Even so, huge barriers exist between food production industries, public health organizations, and human health academic institutions that make such complex problems difficult to mitigate. Such complex Food Security problems are increasing. Through hunger and economic distress they are disproportionately impacting the lives of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged. Hence, we seek USDA support for a 500-person, international, One Health Research Symposium to review Food Security research and problem solving efforts. This Symposium will be held at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas during April 21-23, 2024. Our international Symposium Planning Committee of 22 diverse experts is designing a program to engage leaders in agricultural industry, public health, veterinary health, food safety, and environmental health institutions. The Symposium will be unique in that food productions experts will be centrally featured with the goal of identifying common ground from which new interdisciplinary research partnerships might arise and lead to better food resilence. We will feature lectures from the beef, dairy, egg & poultry, pork, aquaculture, fresh produce, and processed food industries. Other research topics will include emerging infectious diseases (viral, bacterial, and other), and the evironmentalal, social, and public communication factors that impact Food Security. We will particularly highlight successful One Health mitigation approaches to Food Security problems. We will also feature a poster competition with monetary awards