'Grand' career but concerns for the future

The deer industry owes a lot to the skills and expertise of animal scientist Professor Frank Griffin. His ability to provide solutions to fight the problems of TB, yersinia and Johnes disease that were serious threats to the future productivity of the farmed deer sector was critical.

This passionate and entertaining character also had a wonderful ability to sell the often complicated message of the science of the disease and the solution in laymans terms to the always attentive farmer audience. What often helped was his colourful language, his humour and the mix of great yarns amid the serious science and solutions to the deer health problems he endeavoured to solve.

With such work so valuable to our agricultural sector it is disturbing to hear of his concerns of lack of investment in our new bright young scientists that will be crucial in solving the problems of our future livestock health. The media has been highlighting the lack of priority that careers advisers have been giving to our young people who want to train in agriculture so to lose the few talented ones that have succeeded in this field would be criminal.

How do we change the status of agriculture in education so that the investment matches its importance?.  Your views?

Professor Frank Griffin sums up his lengthy career in animal science with a simple comment - "it's grand"reports The ODT. For three decades, Prof Griffin has led a University of Otago-based research team devoted to solving animal health problems in the deer industry. That work has included developing diagnostic tests for the detection of two major bacterial diseases of NZ deer - bovine tuberculosis and Johne's disease - and a vaccine for the prevention of yersiniosis.

Widely respected in the industry, he was recently one of 11 researchers and scholars elected as Fellows of the Royal Society of NZ. Such an honour meant he had peer acceptance and that meant a lot to him, he said.

Deer Industry NZ producer manager Tony Pearse said it recognised Prof Griffin's substantial commitment to the industry and the challenges associated with both Tb and Johne's disease in deer over three decades. Those in the industry had enjoyed Prof Griffin's enthusiasm and passion and his sharing of science, knowledge and services.

Irish-born Prof Griffin did his primary degree in microbiology then his PhD in reproductive immunology. He wanted to go to a "new world society" but he did not want to go to the likes of the United States or Australia. There were job offers in both Australia and NZ  but he arrived in Dunedin in 1973 and started work at the university as an immunology lecturer.

His involvement in the deer industry began following a trip to Queenstown where he met up with former All Black Duncan Robertson who had just got some deer. The first challenge was to examine how post-capture stress could be managed. It was quickly established that to get deer to survive, the solution was not to get them eating but to get them drinking.

Then other issues were identified - Tb was a big problem and it was suggested it might be the disease that prevented deer farming development, he recalled. The issue at that stage was to find a test, other than a skin test, for Tb diagnosis. Prof Griffin led a group at the university which developed a series of diagnostic tests that were more sensitive and specific than the skin test used at the time to screen the deer population.

The Griffin test was able to detect those high-risk deer that were so heavily infected they were anergic to subtle skin tests and were diagnosed skin-test negative but, in reality, were the major sources of Tb infection and a threat to the health of the herd. The identification and removal of those key animals was partly responsible for the major progress in reducing bovine Tb threats to the NZ  farmed deer herd, the deer industry said.

In collaboration with Drs Colin Mackintosh and Bryce Buddle from AgResearch, a vaccine was developed to protect vulnerable young deer from yersinia infection. The commercialisation of that vaccine had eliminated the disease as a major economic constraint to production for deer farmers. And for Johne's disease, the development of a series of antibody tests meant infected animals could be identified and culled early, removing the major source of new infection from the herd.

Prof Griffin said the deer industry was special because, all over the world, enterprising people had been recruited to work in it. But he also had some concerns about the future. While he believed animal health and infectious disease remained the single most important arbiter of farm profit in the future, he was concerned that within three years there might not be scientists working on animal health in NZ

There had never been a time when there was a greater need for investment in animal health. People were more preoccupied by volume, rather than quality, and nobody was concerned about the health and integrity of the productive unit. In the past decade, Prof Griffin said he had probably had four of the best PhD students he had ever had. Each one chose to work with large animals and each would like to continue to work with large animals for the rest of their careers, but he did not believe they would have that chance.