The view from the Director's office

It has been another busy summer at the AHL.  Avian influenza testing has virtually disappeared from the commercial and backyard flocks, although positive signals continue to occur in wild birds.  Check out the update on avian influenza in wild birds, kindly provided by the Canadian Wildlife Health Centre for this newsletter.  Despite enhanced precautions, there are still COVID cases that cause challenges in staffing; however, our laboratory teams have done a stellar job in managing workload to accommodate vacations and to ensure cases meet the turnaround time expectations.  It has been a great summer to date, and many of us are visiting friends and families that we haven’t seen in person for a long time due to the pandemic.

The one certainty in any diagnostic veterinary laboratory is that there will always be new emerging and re-emerging diseases that confront us, requiring us to update our current diagnostic tests, or to develop new ones.  For an example of the latter, we have an extensive article describing the cases of rabbit hemorrhagic disease in Ontario, a disease that is considered exotic to Canada (although there have been recent cases in Manitoba, Quebec and BC), and is on the CFIA list of immediately notifiable diseases.  Nutritional diseases are featured in a number of articles in this newsletter, and there are also several case reports of uncommon disorders or unusual infections.

Despite the turnover in staff that all organizations are experiencing currently, the AHL is fortunate in being able to attract personnel with excellent credentials to fill these open positions.  Please check out our Staff highlights section to view the cadre of young, enthusiastic professionals recently hired at the AHL.  I’m sure you will agree that people are our greatest resource.  

I hope you have been able to take some time off to relax and refresh before the busy fall months ahead.

Maria Spinato, Director

Animal Health Laboratory, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON.