Oregon to Oz

Christine’s Journey in the Poultry Industry

By Mingan Choct

Christine Clark is one of our newish “Aussies” who is much loved by her colleagues in the feed and poultry industries in Australia.

Christine has a broad range of expertise in the poultry industry, including nutrition and feed additives, health and diseases, and biosecurity and commercial production. Christine is an efficient, approachable and engaging individual.

Christine is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney and holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agricultural & Resource Economics, from Oregon State University in the USA.

“Around 2018 I began a “harassment” campaign for Dr Peter Groves to be my supervisor, to start a HDR PhD Candidature.  He very graciously accepted me!”. “ We (Husband Dan, and two small dogs) moved to Camden to start this new journey at the same time as joining a new company Premium Agri Products’, said Christine. 

Christine’s PhD journey began with the impossible idea to test different feed ingredients in combination with a live salmonella vaccine program. This is an incredibly challenging program, straddling science, industry and politics. During her pilot study of seeder birds, there was a major outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis (SE) in New South Wales that made national news followed by a strong interest by the media. For an expected way, this provided an opportunity for her to test the Australian ST vaccine for its potential to offer cross protection against a SE challenge.

Many months of rearing birds and working between three different institutes (the Elizabeth MacArthur Agricultural Institute, Birling Laboratories and the University of Sydney – Poultry Research Foundation) proved to be highly fruitful for Christine. She has four good trials under her belt and parts of this work have been presented at APSS, AVPA and two overseas conferences.

“None of this would have happened without the many great people who have taken their time and continue to support me. We are now working on publications and the final thesis for submission, I cannot thank everyone enough”, said Christine.

We wish Christine all the best in completing her PhD!