Speaker: Professor Martin J Woodward will present a seminar: Chicken feed is finger licking good! Disease control and gut health in poultry production!

Host: Mark Webber

Background:

Chair of Gut Microbiome Studies, Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Reading 

After early education in Microbiology with Chemistry and Microbial Genetics at Reading and Oxford Universities, Martin has had a productive career in veterinary microbiology for approaching four decades much of it as Head of Bacteriology at the CVL/VLA/AHVLA/APHA! He has specialised in veterinary and public health bacteriology and used a variety of genetic approaches to understand better host pathogen interactions especially of gastrointestinal zoonotic pathogens and their molecular epidemiology with a particular focus upon the mechanisms and genetics of innate and acquired antimicrobial resistance. He has also had an interest in the Spirochaetes discovering a new pathogen associated with a virulent form of digital dermatitis in cattle and sheep and he has been involved in public health tracing of Leptospirosis in man and the sources of infection.

He has over 300 peer reviewed papers published and numerous other outputs. The control of food borne zoonoses (FBZ) has been, and remains, his major interest and Martin has worked on intervention strategies that have resulted in, for example, the production of several vaccines that have been used worldwide such as Salenvac [originally Hoechst] and Poulvac [Pfizer/Zoetis]: he is actively creating new vaccines for other major international Pharma companies.

Since moving to the University of Reading five years ago he has focused more on poultry production issues using animal models to study the impact of dietary modification upon productivity and health.

The talk will cover a broad sweep of recent work with a focus on animal health and its impact on the product that enters the human food chain.

All staff from organisations on the Norwich Research Park are welcome to attend.