Dr Andrew James

Livestock economist and information specialist

SPECIALISATION:

Dr James is Director and Chairman of PAN Livestock Services Ltd and Director of Director of the Veterinary Epidemiology & Economics Research Unit (VEERU) at The University of Reading. He has more than 20 years research and consultancy experience in livestock production and disease control in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America.

Dr James is in great demand as a livestock information specialist. He has established veterinary epidemiology units in Africa and Latin America and developed a variety of computer software for the management of livestock information. He developed the InterHerd computer program, which was designed for herd management in Latin America and has recently been named as the official replacement for the Daisy herd management system in the United Kingdom.

VEERU’s programme of research in livestock herd modelling began with the steady state model developed by Dr James for his PhD, and widely used for project and farm-level economic evaluation. For the past fifteen years he has led a series of research projects developing simulation models for rinderpest, BSE and smallholder livestock enterprises. He is also VEERU’s senior tutor in simulation modelling.

Dr James is a regular contributor to FAO and OIE Expert consultations particularly with reference to the control of transboundary diseases, disease surveillance and disease modelling. He is a member of the advisory committee for the FAO Emergency Programme for the Prevention of Transboundary Diseases (EMPRES), and was a member of the expert groups that developed epidemiological surveillance standards for declaring countries free of rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia and foot and mouth disease.

Dr James has considerable experience of project planning, monitoring and evaluation. Since 1990 he has been the leader of the backstopping and monitoring teams for projects managed by PAN Livestock Services in Botswana, Zambia and Kenya