Brief CV of Dr Peter Roeder

Peter Roeder is a veterinarian with broad experience of disease epidemiology, diagnosis and control and the functioning of veterinary services.

Graduating from the Royal Veterinary College, London University, in 1969 he worked in mixed practice in UK before working for three years as a field veterinarian in Botswana. After another spell in mixed practice in UK he gained a MSc in Tropical Veterinary Science from the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine, Edinburgh University, and then worked in laboratory diagnosis and disease investigation for three years in Ethiopia.

After a year in Nigeria running the Disease Investigation Laboratory at Vom he returned to UK and became a Research Officer for the UK Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF) at the Central Veterinary Laboratory, Weybridge, conducting research into virus diseases of farmed livestock and gained a PhD in veterinary virology from the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, for his work on the pathogenesis of pestivirus infections.

Seconded to the Australian CSIRO he worked at the Pirbright Laboratory to develop the antigen detection and typing ELISA for FMD which has been the standard laboratory test in use throughout most of the world’s laboratories since 1985. Returning to MAFF he continued to work at Pirbright to study the supposed fetopathogenic effects of bluetongue virus in cattle.

After four years running the Biotechnology Unit at Weybridge, during which his team developed a number of diagnostic tests for pathogenic agents and conducted research into the diagnosis of bovine, deer and badger tuberculosis he was enticed back to Africa. This time it was to join the World Bank’s Ethiopian Fourth Livestock Development Project in which he was responsible for establishing the Central Disease Investigation Laboratory and a disease investigation service.

Having first worked with rinderpest in Ethiopia in 1975, he spent a considerable amount of time studying the epidemiology of the disease from 1989 to 1992, the results of which were used to design an innovative control programme which saw the disease eliminated within three years

From 1993 Peter joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) initially posted to the Philippines to establish the Philippine Animal Health Centre and conduct studies into a number of diseases including foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever, surra in buffaloes and cattle, haemonchosis/mecistocirrosis, babesiosis and anaplasmosis.

From 1994 he was based in Rome as an Animal Health Officer where he worked as a member of the small team which established the EMPRES (Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases) travelling extensively in Asia, the Middle East and Africa in connection with control of the major epizootic diseases.

In 2000 he was appointed as the Secretary of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) guiding the programme to achieve the world-wide eradication of the disease. He has also been active in the international effort to combat H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza since 2004 working extensively in Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Nigeria. On reaching FAO mandatory retirement age in June 2007 he retired from FAO but continues to work as an independent consultant and still travels extensively. He continues to be heavily involved in GREP and the process of proving that rinderpest has been eradicated from the world by OIE accreditation

In particular he has specialist expertise and extensive practical experience of disciplines relating to the control of infectious and especially epizootic diseases, namely; disease investigation; virology; laboratory diagnostics; epidemiology; reporting and surveillance systems; disease control procedures; official veterinary service structures and functions. He has a proven track record in initiating, planning, executing and assessing research and enjoys public presentation and teaching at post-graduate student and professional levels.

He has broad personal experience of the recognition, epidemiology, diagnosis and control of virtually all the major infectious diseases of livestock, inter alia: rinderpest; avian influenza; Newcastle disease; peste des petits ruminants; foot-and-mouth disease; Rift Valley fever; bluetongue; African horse sickness; hog cholera; African swine fever; sheep and goat pox, lumpy skin disease; rabies; malignant catarrhal fever, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia; contagious caprine pleuropneumonia; haemorrhagic septicaemia; brucellosis; tuberculosis and bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

He has travelled extensively to work in 64 countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. Consequently he has an extensive knowledge of the conditions which prevail in developing countries and those in transition. He has published extensively and is the author/co-author of 114 scientific papers. In January 2008 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the UK New Year’s Honours List for services to veterinary science.