Cargill partners with Wildlife Conservation Society

Cargill and the Wildlife Conservation Society have formed a partnership to support global efforts to examine health links among humans, livestock, and wildlife, and to monitor for avian influenza and other diseases shared between people and animals.    Cargill is committing $1.5 million for two initiatives spearheaded by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) expanding a global surveillance network for avian influenza in Indonesia and Vietnam, and introducing a grants program for animal health projects in Brazil. In Brazil, Cargill will fund a new WCS initiative to support innovative projects that examine the health linkages among humans, domestic animals, and wildlife. In Vietnam and Indonesia where many serious outbreaks of avian influenza have occurred, the Cargill-WCS partnership will help expand the Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS) program. In partnership with local government bodies, Cargill and WCS will train local teams to survey and monitor animals in market trade centers, allowing for the comparison of virulence in pathogens between market and wild bird populations. GAINS is a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder program for the collection and sharing of data on avian influenza.