Missouri and Kansas team up
By Nancy Jorgensen

Animal-health corridor paves the way for innovation and jobs

Steve Chu works on the front line of a drive to make the Kansas City area’s animal-health corridor as familiar a term as the Silicon Valley.

As executive vice president of Ft. Dodge Animal Health in Overland Park, Kan., Chu directs a research and development team toiling in laboratories to come up with world-renowned vaccines that prevent West Nile disease in horses, Circovirus in swine and respiratory disease in cattle. The research has led to economic benefits for livestock owners.

“We are fortunate to have two universities devoted to research and discovery in the area,” said Chu. “At Fort Dodge, we also emphasize discovery, but we add product development, registration and marketing. Collectively, we’ve got the right kind of people, equipment and resources to complete the chain of innovation. We take dreams and translate them into reality.”

Famous for its giant stockyard in the last century, the Kansas City area continues to handle huge numbers of livestock. At the same time, it’s transforming its cow town image into a high-tech center for animal health.

A place and an idea
What local leaders dubbed the animal-health corridor includes veterinary and animal science departments at Kansas State University in Manhattan and the University of Missouri in Columbia. The corridor stretches between the two universities and includes Kansas City and St. Joseph. The region already accounts for about $5 billion, or one-third, of annual global sales of animal health and nutrition products, according to a recent study by Brakke Consulting.

Three organizations work together to make the corridor’s economic impact even greater. The Kansas City Area Development Council attracts new companies. The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce fosters favorable legislation. And the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute increases public and private research partnerships. A $300,000 grant from Bayer HealthCare, headquartered in the corridor, jump-started the project a couple of years ago.

The group’s efforts seem to be working. Fort Dodge Animal Health recently announced that it will build a new $40-million research and development facility in the Kansas Bioscience Park in Olathe, housing a team of 200 researchers headed up by Chu. Other recent Corridor accomplishments:

• The U.S. Animal Health Association moved from Virginia to St. Joseph.

• IdentiGEN, a Dublin-based food safety firm, located its American headquarters in the area.

New products save farmers money
While Fort Dodge Animal Health stands as one of the largest Corridor businesses, Addison Labs represents a locally grown example. Bruce Addison started Addison Biological Laboratory, Inc., in Fayette, Mo., a quarter-century ago after studying microbiology at MU. His company produces a number of products, including a vaccine that prevents pinkeye in cattle.

“Pinkeye causes blindness and costs the cattle industry $200 million a year in lost gain,” Addison said. Pinkeye can be treated after its outbreak, but cattlemen must catch affected animals and doctor them in a chute. A few days later, more will come down with it. “If you vaccinate in the face of the outbreak, you can treat it all at once, saving time and money.”

Addison Labs invented a swine vaccine that, once squirted in a baby pig’s nose, prevents respiratory disease, taking 10 days off the time needed to reach market weight and saving money in terms of antibiotics. The lab also customizes vaccines for disease strains affecting specific herds, and provides products for the booming pet market.

Jobs for sons and daughters
Addison Labs employs 22 people, compared to Fort Dodge Animal Health’s total workforce of 3,300 worldwide. Fort Dodge is a division of Wyeth, the giant pharmaceutical company.

No matter what its size, each company in the animal-health corridor means more than economic savings for agricultural producers. Each also provides jobs for the sons and daughters of agricultural producers—kids who may not be able to find jobs on the farm in an age of increasing farm sizes.

Neil Olson, dean of veterinary medicine at MU, puts the corridor’s impact in perspective. “At last count in 2002, we had 100,000 farmers in Missouri, and the economic value of all Missouri animal agriculture totals about $3 billion a year,” he said. “In 2006, there were 13,000 employees in the corridor, and its economic engine generated about $5 billion.”

As Olson pointed out, a growing corridor will need more vets and scientists. “Nationally, we face a shortage of 15,000 vets by 2025 if we do nothing,” he said. “Just 28 colleges in the country are graduating 2,500 per year.” MU graduates about 70 vets yearly, K-State about 120. Policy-makers are building facilities, but it will take a greater investment to increase class sizes.

With the shortage, especially of large- and food-animal vets, graduates should face no problem in landing jobs. We talked to two students who may benefit from corridor positions.

Julie Huff, a first-year vet student at K-State, hails from De Soto, Mo., and attended MU for her undergraduate studies. “I plan to go into a large animal private practice with another vet for my first 5 years,” Huff said. “After establishing myself, I hope to consult on the side with a private company.”

Large-animal veterinary practices are already recruiting John Bolinger, a fourth-year vet student at MU. He grew up on a small farm near California, Mo., and plans to stay in the state. “I have my pick of where I want to go,” he said.

In addition to vets, corridor businesses employ a range of workers from scientists to technicians. Larry Hollis, professor and extension beef veterinarian at K-State, says that animal health companies like to hire Midwesterners. “People on the Coasts don’t appreciate the value of agriculture like those in the Heartland,” he said. “We take more pride.”

Since he hails from California, Fort Dodge’s Chu doesn’t rule out the contributions of employees from other areas. He does say this: “We find that people we attract from the Midwest, if they have a farming or animal husbandry background, we’re able to keep them for a longer time.”

Partnerships build landscape
The corridor group’s efforts helped MU vet students when Missouri recently funded a tuition reimbursement program for those who stay and practice in underserved areas of the state. Kansas has implemented a similar program.

Partly due to the corridor initiative, MU and K-State now collaborate more. Bill Duncan, president of the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, recently traveled to San Diego as part of a team led by the Kansas City Area Development Council to attract Synbiotics, an animal health diagnostics company, to the Kansas City area. “Representatives from both vet schools were part of the team that made the presentation,” he said. “Both universities have significant diagnostics capabilities, and they came together to support this effort, which proved successful.”

Last year, Duncan’s organization secured $50,000 to begin planning a new Center for Comparative Medicine and Animal Health Research, a collaboration between K-State and MU vet programs as well as other corridor stakeholders. The Institute also responds to requests for proposals from places like the National Institute of Health. “Being a third party empowers us to bring people together to put forth the best possible science,” he said.

Cooperation between universities and corporations hasn’t always been easy due to competitive concerns. In addition, governments are often reluctant to work across state, county and city lines.

Richard Longworth, senior fellow with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, recently visited Kansas City as part of a tour promoting his book, Caught in the Middle, America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism. “Kansas City in particular is hampered by the fact that the state line runs right through town and the Missouri and Kansas halves of the city have never been able to cooperate much,” he told Today’s Farmer. Generally, he argues, Midwestern states are locked within borders that make them too small and parochial to compete in a globalized world.

“But I see the landscape changing,” Duncan countered.

Animal research helps humans
Beyond benefiting agriculture and creating jobs, K-State’s Hollis added that the corridor involves clean industries that contribute to the tax base. MU’s Olson touches on an attribute that may weigh more heavily in the future.

“There’s a new notion that it’s all one medicine; that animal and human health are connected,” Olson said. “We’re faced with issues of great concern in this global environment. Seventy five percent of all infectious diseases affecting animals can also affect humans, and someone in Hong Kong today can be in Columbia tomorrow.” He hopes the new Center for Comparative Medicine and Animal Health Research will lead to breakthroughs in human health.

Back at Fort Dodge Animal Health, Chu’s team has developed an avian flu vaccine for birds that may prove Olson’s point. The company registered the vaccine in the United States, Canada and 15 European nations, stockpiling it in case the flu arrives from Asia.

“It’s a big risk to develop a vaccine that you may never need,” Chu said. “We hope it never shows up here, but we want to be proactive.”

Spending time and resources to invest in the corridor may carry risks as well. But most experts we interviewed agree it will pay off in the long run.

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