On the Ground at the Centre for Applied One Health Research and Policy Advice (OHRP) — Roaming Vets, Three Project Ledgers, and Pig Farms, Chicken Farms and Fish Rafts

This article belongs to Module 11 "Medicine / Hospitals" of the Unofficial History Archive of City University of Hong Kong. When most people think of CityU's veterinary footprint, they picture the largest animal medical centre in Southeast Asia in Sham Shui Po (see veterinary-college-2.md) or the college's accredited degree programmes (see veterinary-college.md). This piece covers a lesser-known operation that pushes veterinary medicine beyond the clinic walls — the Centre for Applied One Health Research and Policy Advice (OHRP), and the ambulatory veterinary service it runs out to pig farms, chicken farms and fish rafts.

Data current as of June 2026; all facts carrying a year, figure or institution name are cited in place. The living scholars named in this article appear strictly in the context of routine academic biographies, official visits and professional achievement, and are named accordingly.

Bottom line up front: Established in October 2016 within the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences, OHRP launched Hong Kong's first farm-visiting ambulatory veterinary service in 2019, funded by an HK$35 million^※ grant from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

Clinic vets wait for patients to come to them; OHRP's vets do the reverse — they drive out to find their patients: pig farms in Yuen Long, chicken farms in Sheung Shui, fish rafts in Sai Kung. This is a team that carries its stethoscopes to the field, serving not cats and dogs but the few dozen remaining local farmers and fish-culture households of Hong Kong. The logic underneath goes far beyond "treating disease": a sick pig or a sick chicken can be the starting point of the next zoonotic outbreak, and the source of food-safety and antibiotic-resistance problems at the dinner table. This article begins with the centre's institutional setup and traces how it extends veterinary medicine into public health.

# What is OHRP? — a "policy-oriented" veterinary research centre

According to the centre's website^※, the Centre for Applied One Health Research and Policy Advice (OHRP) was established in October 2016 under the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences (JCC). It sits alongside two more familiar entities — the Animal Medical Centre (VMC) and the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL) — as three parallel arms: VMC handles clinical consultations, VDL handles laboratory diagnostics, and OHRP handles research and policy — turning findings from the farm into scientific evidence that can shape government decisions.

The centre's self-described mission is a long English statement. According to the OHRP website^※, the centre aims to "generate scientific knowledge that will lead to the development of evidence-led policies at local, national, regional and international levels for the prevention and control of infectious animal diseases affecting human health and animal production, welfare and health."

That convoluted mission statement hides the real difference between OHRP and an ordinary veterinary institution. An ordinary veterinary clinic answers the question "this animal is sick, what do we do?"; OHRP asks "why does this disease occur, and what policies can stop it spreading?" The three keywords in the centre's name — "Applied", "Research" and "Policy Advice" — mark out its position: not pure theory, but farm-level research wired into the policy desk. The centre also states its ambition to become "a recognised global centre of excellence in One Health research and policy advice."

# Who is at the helm? — Pfeiffer, whose method is "connecting science to policy"

OHRP's director is Professor Dirk Pfeiffer, CityU's Chow Tak Fung Chair Professor of One Health. According to a Times Higher Education report^※, Pfeiffer joined CityU in 2016 to take up the chair, while keeping roughly one-fifth of his post at the UK's Royal Veterinary College (RVC). He is a well-known figure in international veterinary epidemiology, specialising in statistical and modelling approaches to the spread and control of animal disease.

One point Pfeiffer returns to again and again is the gap, often overlooked, between "science" and "policy". According to the Times Higher Education report^※, he describes a key aspect of the work as "how to connect the science with policy such that it has an impact on policy" — which is precisely where the "Policy Advice" in OHRP's name comes from. Producing elegant research is not enough; the research has to change what regulators do before it counts as landing.

He is equally blunt about disease risk. The same report quotes him on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as "an extremely worrying global epidemic" — a bigger problem than Covid-19, only slower and more hidden. Hearing "a bigger problem than Covid" from the director of a centre that studies drug use on farm animals neatly explains why OHRP watches every jab of antibiotic on pig and chicken farms: antibiotic misuse on farms ends up back in humans.

According to the same report, another key figure at the centre is Professor Sophie St-Hilaire, an aquatic animal health specialist, who leads the fish health project discussed below. The centre takes in both land livestock and aquatic species, giving OHRP a research remit covering "terrestrial and aquatic production animal" alike.

# What is the "ambulatory veterinary service"? — Hong Kong's first team that takes vets to the farms

OHRP's most concrete and most public-facing operation is the Ambulatory Veterinary Service. According to OHRP's ambulatory service page^※, with support from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences runs Hong Kong's first ambulatory veterinary service for fish, pig and chicken farmers. "Ambulatory" here means the vets do not sit in a clinic: they respond to farmers' requests and go to the farm, bringing treatment, sampling and disease-prevention guidance to the site.

The service's overall goal is summed up in one official sentence. According to OHRP's ambulatory service page^※, it is "to work with the farmers to find solutions for preventing disease and to improve the sustainability of their farms." The phrase "work with the farmers" is the key — this is not an inspection-and-penalty exercise carried out from on high, but a team standing on the farmers' side, helping them prevent disease and keep their farms viable.

Why is "going to the farm" a first for Hong Kong? The local livestock and aquaculture sectors are small and scattered, and have long lacked vets dedicated to farm work. According to a pig-farmer study in BMC Veterinary Research^※, many pig farmers surveyed complained that government vets were slow to respond and limited in specialist capability, leaving farms with nowhere to turn when disease hit. One farmer put it plainly: "The problem is that in Hong Kong now there is no one that can teach us how to do so.^※" OHRP's ambulatory service fills precisely that gap — the "no one comes to the farm" void.

# Where did the HK$35 million come from, and where did it go? — the ledgers of three projects

The ambulatory service is not volunteer labour; behind it is a clear pot of public money. According to CityU's January 2019 press release^※, in January 2019 the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences received a total of HK$35 million from the AFCD to launch three two-year research projects, one for each of the main farming sectors — pigs, chickens and fish. These three projects are the financial skeleton of the ambulatory service.

A note on the figures: the three project amounts (HK$15m + HK$15m + HK$5m = HK$35m), the leads and the beneficiary counts all come from CityU's official January 2019 press release and the JCC project pages, and reflect the point at which the projects launched in 2019. The two land-based projects (pigs and chickens) are supported by the Sustainable Agriculture Development Fund, and the fish project by the Sustainable Fisheries Development Fund — both are public funds administered by the AFCD to support upgrading of local agriculture and fisheries.

Pfeiffer's description of the projects' goals is quoted officially in a single sentence. According to the CityU press release^※, "Our goals are to improve farm productivity, animal welfare and food safety, and to prevent the emergence of zoonotic diseases." Four things in one sentence — productivity, animal welfare, food safety, zoonotic-disease prevention — which shows why this service is not merely "helping farmers treat sick animals" but sits at the intersection of agriculture, public health and food safety.

The projects provide dedicated veterinary services: according to the CityU press release, these include clinical support tailored to each farm's needs, plus assistance with disease prevention against pathogens, parasites and harmful algal blooms. In other words, the vets do more than give injections and write prescriptions: they help farmers find gaps across the whole chain of husbandry management, biosecurity and disease surveillance.

# The chicken-farm story: PHAP and PHPM, 2019 to 2024

Of the three sectors, the poultry project has the best public record, and it best shows OHRP's closed loop of "farm visits + research + policy". According to the poultry case study in CABI One Health Cases (2024)^※, the poultry project actually ran in two phases:

• Poultry Health Assurance Project (PHAP), running from 2019 to 2022;
• Poultry Health and Production Management Project (PHPM), running from 2022 to 2024.

According to the same case study, both phases were funded by the Sustainable Agriculture Development Fund and conducted in collaboration with the AFCD, the Chicken Breeders Association and CityU's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (CityU VDL), providing veterinary services to roughly 29 chicken farms in Hong Kong. The collaboration chain says a lot: the government department (AFCD) supplies money and policy, the industry association (Chicken Breeders Association) supplies trust and access, the university diagnostic lab (VDL) supplies testing capacity, and OHRP supplies the vets and the research — four parties working together to get services into local chicken farms.

The services go beyond diagnosis and treatment. According to the poultry One Health case study^※ and related OHRP material, the project also offers free newsletters and continuing-education seminars (under the "Poultry News-Technology Promotion Information Plan"), delivering the latest husbandry techniques and disease-prevention knowledge to farmers and addressing the chronic problem of farm workers having "nowhere to learn". One core objective is helping chicken and pig farmers reduce antibiotic use by understanding antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — which ties directly back to Pfeiffer's assessment of AMR as "a bigger problem than Covid".

Taken apart, the chicken project does four things at once: farm visits (clinical), laboratory testing (VDL), farmer training (education), and reducing drug use (policy objective). None of these is novel on its own, but linking the four into a publicly funded service system covering nearly thirty chicken farms across Hong Kong is a first. That CityU published the poultry One Health practice as an academic case study in CABI One Health Cases (2024) is itself a step in "turning field experience into communicable knowledge."

# The pig-farm story: 43 pig farmers, and a study that records their doubts

If the chicken project shows OHRP at its smoothest, the pig project has left behind a rare piece of academic literature that honestly records farmers' resistance — which lets this article go beyond official publicity and see the real friction of delivery.

First, the scale of Hong Kong's pig industry. According to a study published in BMC Veterinary Research in February 2023^※, in 2019 Hong Kong had 40 pig farms still in operation, run by 38 farmers; the median herd size was around 2,800 pigs (range 950–7,000), with roughly 100,000 pigs sent to slaughter each year. These local pigs supply only about 14% of Hong Kong's pork, with the remaining 86% imported — a small industry, but one carrying a double role as supplier of local fresh meat and as a sentinel for biosecurity.

The value of this study lies in its dedicated survey of what pig farmers thought of CityU's pig health and production management service. The findings are not uniformly rosy. According to the study^※, farmers' attitude to the new free veterinary service was "cautiously optimistic" mixed with scepticism — they welcomed someone coming to the farm, yet doubted whether CityU vets really understood local pig farming, and worried about language barriers (many frontline vets are not native Cantonese speakers). The most telling remark comes from a farmer in his own words: "The problem is that in Hong Kong now there is no one that can teach us how to do so.^※" They long for someone to teach them better breeding and husbandry, yet doubt even CityU can connect with local realities.

The friction shows up directly in participation rates. According to the study, of the 38 pig farmers, only 9 ultimately took part in CityU's service — a participation rate of about 24%. The study groups the difficulties farmers face into three categories: regulatory constraints (farm infrastructure is restricted by outdated regulations and hard to upgrade), inadequate veterinary support (slow government response, limited specialist capacity), and existential threats to the industry (poor public perception, labour shortages, absent R&D, competition from mainland China). These overlapping pressures mean that even a well-intentioned "farm-visiting vet team" cannot easily overturn farmers' accumulated sense of helplessness.

# Fish rafts and fish ponds: aquatic health problems across nearly a thousand households

The project covering the largest number of households is, unexpectedly, the one out at sea. According to the CityU press release^※, the fish health project is led by Professor Sophie St-Hilaire, funded with HK$5 million from the Sustainable Fisheries Development Fund, and serves around 945 marine fish farmers and 332 pond fish farmers — far more households than the pig and chicken projects, though each one is small.

Disease prevention in aquaculture faces different challenges from land livestock. According to the CityU press release, the fish project's disease-prevention assistance specifically covers pathogens, parasites and harmful algal blooms. Harmful algal blooms are what locals call "red tides": once one erupts, an entire fish raft's stock can die off en masse within days — historically one of the natural disasters marine fish farmers in Hong Kong fear most. Including red-tide surveillance in a veterinary service shows that OHRP's understanding of "fish disease" extends to the farming environment itself — a concrete instance of "One Health" linking animal health to environmental health.

According to the OHRP website^※, the centre also researches nanobubble technology for aquaculture, aimed at cutting antibiotic use in fish farming — in line with the land-based goal of "reducing drug use in livestock", both approaches to containing AMR at the production end. With the fish project led by an aquatic animal health specialist and targeting red tides and drug reduction, OHRP's ambulatory service genuinely covers both "terrestrial and aquatic" production animals, rather than focusing only on livestock beyond cats and dogs.

# Why is this "public health" rather than just "treating animals"? — the One Health framework

Look at the pig, chicken and fish projects together, and OHRP's real ambition is not animals — it is people. That brings us back to "One Health" in its name.

"One Health" is a framework that treats human health, animal health and ecosystem health as a single whole: the three are interconnected, and a problem in any one of them ripples into the other two. According to the Times Higher Education report^※, Pfeiffer put it this way: "The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that animal health and welfare is inextricably linked to human health." One sentence stating the reason OHRP exists — stopping disease on the farm is stopping disease in people.

In Hong Kong specifically, the framework carries unusual weight. The city sits on a major migratory-bird flyway and borders mainland China's agricultural regions; it has repeatedly been an early-warning zone for zoonotic diseases such as the H5N1 and H7N9 avian influenzas. A veterinary network that can do disease surveillance, rapid sampling and farm visits in local farms acts as a "sentinel" at the earliest stage of an outbreak. OHRP feeds the farm data collected by its ambulatory service into research on zoonoses and antimicrobial resistance, then pushes the findings toward policy — this chain of "farm → data → research → policy" is what sets it apart from an ordinary veterinary institution.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the most typical issue on that chain. To prevent disease and boost production, farms have long added antibiotics to feed; resistant bacteria breed in animals, then travel through the food chain and environment back into humans, eroding the effectiveness of human medicines. When OHRP helps pig and chicken farmers "reduce drug use by understanding AMR", it looks like agricultural extension work, but in substance it is guarding an upstream gate for the drug safety of everyone in Hong Kong. This is why Pfeiffer calls AMR "a bigger problem than Covid": it is slow, hidden, and transmits silently between animals and humans.

# From the coop to the table: why does food safety and quality fall under a vet's remit?

Among OHRP's research portfolio is a strand easily overlooked by outsiders yet directly touching ordinary diners — Applied Food Safety and Quality Research. According to the OHRP website^※, this is a distinct research line alongside disease prevention; and according to the poultry One Health case study (2024)^※, the poultry project itself lists "food safety and chicken meat quality" among its objectives — one of the ultimate endpoints of serving farms is making the chicken on the dinner table safer.

The logic of folding food safety into veterinary services is straightforward: if a farm chicken carries bacteria, exceeds drug-residue limits, or is contaminated during transport or slaughter, the risk is ultimately borne by whoever eats it. When OHRP's ambulatory vets help farmers regulate drug use and control disease at the farm gate, they are stopping hazards at the very top of the food chain — far more proactive than waiting for chicken to reach a wet market and then spot-checking it. CityU's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL), with its pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing, supplies the laboratory backbone for this line; details of the VDL's testing capabilities are in veterinary-college-2.md.

This also explains why OHRP pairs "reducing antibiotic use on farms" with "food safety" in a single service package. Antibiotic misuse breeds resistant bacteria and leaves drug residues — both paths lead to food-safety problems. For a city where 86% of its pork and much of its chicken and seafood come through supply chains, securing the farm-end safety of the local 14% of fresh pork, local chicken and local fish gives citizens an extra layer of protection and leaves the food chain one controllable benchmark.

# From Hong Kong to the region: the One Health Poultry Hub and disease modelling

OHRP's vision does not stop at Hong Kong's local farms. As a centre that aims at "regional and international policy", it reaches into larger disease-network research.

The most representative of these is the One Health Poultry Hub. According to JCC news^※, this is an international project funded by the UK's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), in which Prof. Pfeiffer serves as Deputy Director. The project brings together laboratory scientists, clinicians, vets and social scientists to study, through a One Health lens, a sharp question: how and why the intensification of poultry production raises the risk of infectious disease — and on that basis to identify high-risk behaviours, processes and environments, then test new control measures.

The Hub has also produced concrete tools. According to the same news release, the team developed a computer model called EPINEST (EPIdemic Network Simulation in poultry Transportation systems) — an agent-based simulation framework for modelling how pathogens spread through real poultry production and transport networks. Turning the live-chicken supply chain from farm to market into a computable network and then "running the virus through it" is quintessentially Pfeiffer's method of connecting science to policy through modelling.

According to the OHRP website^※, the centre's research portfolio also includes cross-border risk assessment of African swine fever in Southeast Asia, nanobubble drug-reduction technology for aquaculture, and food safety and quality research for chicken meat. These projects share one common thread: disease and food risk never stop at a single farm or a single city. What OHRP aims to do is connect first-hand observations from Hong Kong farms to the regional and global disease-prevention frontline.

# Division of labour with sister articles, and boundary notes

To avoid overlap with other articles in this module, here is the division of labour: this article covers OHRP's institutional setup, the ambulatory veterinary service and its One Health research;

• The founding of the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences (JCC), its Cornell collaboration, the BVM curriculum and international accreditation: see veterinary-college.md;
• The facilities, specialities and scale of the Animal Medical Centre (VMC) and the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL): see veterinary-college-2.md;
• The history of VMC's acquisition and expansion from the Peace Avenue Veterinary Clinic: see veterinary-college-3.md;
• Why CityU has no human medical school: see biomedical-and-health-sciences.md.

Boundary notes (stated honestly, not filled in by inference):

• Public records on the latest operational status of the ambulatory service (whether projects were renewed after 2024, and at what amounts) are limited; this article anchors on the two poultry phases PHAP (2019–2022) and PHPM (2022–2024) and the three two-year projects from 2019 as verifiable points, and leaves any subsequent renewal to official announcements.
• The pig-project participation rate (9/38) and pig farmer perceptions come from the BMC Veterinary Research academic study (2023), which is the researchers' survey findings at a specific time, not an official account; this archive attributes them as such and does not treat individual respondents' views as industry-wide conclusions.
• The "Chow Tak Fung" title on OHRP's endowed chair is a donation name; this article records it according to official and media English usage and does not retro-translate the Chinese name.

# Summary

Pulling the facts together, OHRP's place in CityU's veterinary landscape can be summarised as follows:

1. Institutional position — OHRP was established in October 2016 under the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences, alongside VMC (clinical) and VDL (diagnostics), with the specific remit of "research + policy advice" and a mission to produce evidence and drive evidence-based policy for animal disease prevention and control.
2. Means of delivery — the ambulatory veterinary service is Hong Kong's first service that takes vets onto pig farms, chicken farms and fish rafts, launched with HK$35 million from the AFCD in 2019 (HK$15m pigs, HK$15m poultry, HK$5m fish), reaching 43 pig farmers, 28 chicken farmers and nearly a thousand fish-farming households.
3. Public-health substance — on the surface the service helps farmers treat disease and raise output; in substance it turns farms into sentinel posts for zoonoses and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), in line with the One Health idea that human, animal and environmental health are one.
4. Real friction — independent academic research on the pig project records that only about a quarter of pig farmers took part and that scepticism was widespread, pointing to the trust and cultural barriers any publicly funded service inevitably faces in the field; this archive presents the official and academic accounts side by side without ruling between them.

In one sentence: CityU has no human medical school, yet through a centre that drives vets out to the fields, it has stretched "veterinary medicine" into "public health".

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