TRANSCRIPT              

 Christina Swaggerty 
Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center in College Station, Texas 
[Running time: 6 min. 02 sec]

Hi, my name is Christi Swaggerty and I'm a microbiologist at the Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center in College Station, Texas and I'm employed in the Food and Feed Safety Research Unit.

The mission of our unit is to develop cost effective means to control Salmonella and other enteric pathogens in poultry, swine and cattle. 

I joined ARS as a post-doc and was hired on as an SY in 2007. During that whole time I have been assigned to the avian immunology CRIS. My graduate training was in veterinary microbiology where I had limited exposure to the field of immunology. However, it wasn't until my post-doctoral training with Dr. Michael Kogut, a leading avian immunologist, where I began to develop an interest and understanding for the significant role and interplay between immunology, genetics and food safety. 

As part of the avian immunology CRIS, my research has employed a functional genomics approach to identify key innate immune genes in chickens that are associated with increased resistance against Salmonella and Campylobacter, the two leading causes of foodborne enteritis in the world.

The CDC classifies Salmonella and Campylobacter as the two leading causes of bacterial derived foodborne illness in the world. In the United States alone, there are 3 to 5 million cases of Salmonella and Campylobacter each year. They result in about 500 deaths and the numbers for Salmonella alone as far as the financial impact are 5-17 billion dollars each year. 

My most significant accomplishment has been the identification of specific genes in poultry that are associated with increased resistance against Salmonella and Campylobacter. In moving our basic research forward, to something that is useful for the poultry industry, we began a breeding program in cooperation with one of the largest poultry breeding companies in the world. 

This small scale breeding program was based solely on our identified selection parameters. As we hypothesized, selection based on an efficient innate immune response produced a stable line of birds with improved resistance against both poultry and foodborne pathogens. 

This novel breeding program used the birds own inherent resistance to yield a line of birds that when utilized by the poultry industry, could reduce the incidence of high consequence human pathogens in poultry resulting in decreased human foodborne illness.

What makes our approach novel and unique is basically two-fold. First we are interested in looking at innate immune parameters we are not looking at acquired immunity and antibody production. And secondly, we are interested in creating a line of birds that are more resistant to a broad range of both poultry and foodborne pathogens and we are not looking to just increase resistance against a single pathogen.
The average person on the street would be interested in our research in that we are not manipulating by adding or deleting genetic material from the birds. Instead, we are identifying individuals with the characteristics that we are interested in and then using 100% naturally occurring birds to produce the off-spring with the desired traits. 

As the demand for food increases, we must be ever diligent in our pursuit of the safest food supplies possible. This will require us to work closely with our industry partners and stakeholders so that we as ARS scientists are proactive in our research approach instead of being reactive. 

My long term research goal is to identify additional biological markers in poultry that are associated with increased resistance to both foodborne and poultry pathogens. Taken together with what we currently know, implementation of our breeding program could significantly reduce the incidences of Salmonella and Campylobacter cases in poultry thus creating a safer food supply for the US consumers. 

We know there are still advances to be made but we have made significant progress in the last 5 years. 

Even though this is an individual award, I would be sorely remiss if I did not acknowledge my colleagues in the immunology CRIS as well as our industry collaborators we've had over the years. 

Without our team approach there is no way that our breeding program would be as advanced as it is right now. This award means a great deal to me personally that it reenforces that what I do is on track with the greater mission of ARS and that finding solutions to agricultural problems that affect Americans everyday from the field to the table.

I would like to wrap up by saying how much I enjoy what I do for ARS. I work with great people and I work for the great people of the United States.