The Maisons-Alfort Animal Health Laboratory must deal with problems that jeopardize the general interest in animal health. Its mission is to identify pathogens affecting herds (mainly cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses) and causing epizootics (epidemics in animals) or zoonoses (animal diseases whose pathogens are transmissible to male).
It offers new alternatives in vaccination. In this context, the Laboratory teams study pathogens of all kinds responsible for infectious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, bluetongue, bovine tuberculosis, trichinellosis, etc. but also develop research for different disease vectors (eg ticks). The Laboratory works within the “one world, one health” concept, provides data and scientific and technical support to risk managers, particularly in the context of emerging diseases.
Its integration in the heart of the campus of the National Veterinary School of Alfort (EnvA) allows it to share with it infrastructures, personnel and research projects, and with the contribution of the National Institute of Agronomic Research (Inra) through two joint research units (UMR).
The Laboratory is responsible for an important reference activity for the analytical diagnosis of many animal diseases, at national, European or global level. It thus has 23 reference mandates, including 15 national mandates and 8 international mandates.
What are the prospects for the years to come?
In order to maintain its level of excellence, the laboratory is committed to three major challenges: continuing to modernize its infrastructure, coping with emergences and re-emergences in its field of intervention, fully integrating into the diagnostic chain- surveillance-control, the new technologies that are currently revolutionizing the approach to health.
Global climate change, as well as new forms of globalization of trade, have led to the emergence of exotic diseases with a strong economic impact in Europe in recent years. These emergences in animal infectiology remain topical and mobilize the Laboratory’s teams (new variants of bluetongue virus, diseases vectored by ticks, schistosomes, etc.).
“Old pathologies” are still a concern for our country and deserve sustained efforts by the Laboratory. Another challenge will be to develop screening, analytical diagnosis and control methods, according to current European and international standards, while integrating new technologies for analyzing genomes and proteins.
The detailed analysis of the host/pathogen interaction, as well as the development of new methods in epidemiology, will allow the Laboratory to continue to fight once morest animal diseases, emerging and re-emerging, in the service of the “one health” concept. promoted by the World Health Organization.