DEFEND was an international partnership of academic, industrial and governmental organisations working together from 2018 – 2023 to tackle the emergence of African swine fever and lumpy skin disease in European livestock.

The consortium was coordinated and led by Professor Pip Beard and the Pirbright Institute, and funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation and research programme.

The DEFEND partners worked together to understand the drivers of ASF and LSD disease emergence. They generated research outputs which led to novel diagnostic tools and vaccines, and provided evidence to support appropriate and rapid responses by decision-makers.

Notable project successes included:

• the development of a risk assessment framework to predict the location of ASF disease outbreaks
• recommendations to tackle the spread of animal disease in insecure settings such as conflict zones
• an evidence-based understanding of the different routes of LSDV transmission
• a computer model which mimics the spread of African swine fever virus amongst populations of wild boar and can be used to estimate the effectiveness of different control measures

Further information about our work and our findings can be found in the Resources section of the website. This website will not be updated after the close of the project (March 2024).