Team:Shanghai HS United/Human Practices
With the purpose to investigate the feasiblity of our research topic-ASFV (African Swine Fever Virus) Rapid Detection, we conducted a series of social investigations and expert interviews.
We conducted online questionnaire survey. We uploaded the QR code of our questionnaire to our WeChat official account and distributed it using WeChat sharing features. Meanwhile, we were fortunate engough to interview Dr. Chaoguang,Ma, Director of Effective Research of Zoetis Animal Vaccine Company, Dr. Cai, research staff at Shanghai Customs Animal, Plant and Food Inspection and Quarantine Technology Center and Mr. Zhang, general manager of a chain restaurant in Shanghai.
Following are the principal conclusions drawen from online questionnaire survey and expert interviews:
The general public has heard about ASFV before, however, they do not have a clear understanding of this virus. Most of our respondents thought that human may be infected by ASFV, which is not true.
The existing ASFV detection methods are quite complicated and costly since most of them should be done in lab environment.
There is a necessity for us to inform the general public of the common knowledge on ASFV and more importantly, an innovative, convenient and inexpensive ASFV detection method will of great value to principal consumers (pig-raising households and government) and the whole society.
According to Dr. Zhongqui Zhang, Director General, China Animal Disease Control Center, Veterinary Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing, China, the first outbreak of African swine fever in China has been confirmed on 3 Aug 2018 . China has the largest pig population in the world (433 million) and represents over half of the global pig herd. The outbreak occurred in a backyard farm in Shenbei New District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. The outbreak began on 1 August. Sequencing analysis showed that the 417 bp of B646L/p72 gene of the ASFV in China shared 100% identity with the current prevalent Georgian strain (Georgia 2007) which is currently spreading in Russia and Eastern Europe.
(https://www.star-idaz.net/2018/08/african-swine-fever-in-china-first-report/)
ASFV is a very tough virus, as it is very stable outside the host and there is no vaccine currently available. In addition, in current China, the scale of pig-raising households varies a lot and hence the biosecurity control level varies. What is worse, the high infection rate and mortality rate of ASF (African swine fever) seriously threatens the economic benefit of pig-raising households. Taking all these factors into consideration, it will be very meaningful and urgent to come up with rapid effective detection methods for ASFV. To the contrast of the current poplular PCR approach to detect ASFV, we wish to invent a test paper, relying on which almost everyone may easily get an accurate results about ASFV test.
As our wet group members were diligently working on related experiments to produce a trial version of the ASFV quick test paper, our dry group members were considering actively about the future industrialization process about this revolutionary product.
We initially thought that since China has the largest pig population and a majority of Chiese are consumers of pork, the general public may become our target consumers for our ASFV test paper. We may help with every consumer with testing whether the pork at their hand is infected with ASFV or not. However, our social survey and professional interviews changed our original plan. Primarily speaking, according to our interview with Dr. Cai, the research staff at Shanghai Customs Animal, Plant and Food Inspection and Quarantine Technology Center, the ASFV inspection and detection are usually implemented at government or other supervision level. They told us that Shanghai Customs primarily uses the fluorescence quantitative technology (PCR) to detect the virus. Because the sensitivity of PCR is very high, the detection results are very accurate in the case of establishing positive and negative control. Meanwhile, Dr. Cai also suggested that since there are currently 26 milliions pig-raising households in China, which scattered across the entire country, it will be meaningful and beneficial to invent a quick ASFV detection method to help the pig-raising households prevent and control the outbreak of ASFV.According to this interview, we thought that we may narrow down our original target consumers from the general public to pig-raising households while for the general public, Dr. Cai suggested that it may still be meaningful to host some events for education purpose since a justified knowledge on ASFV of the general public would contribute to a stable social atmosphere towards prevention and control of ASFV.
We then divided our activities into two parts, the one was about preparation for educating the general public about ASFV, the other one was to conduct further market research about our ASFV test paper.
Regarding the first part, we designed a questionnaire on African swine fever virus (ASFV). The questionnaire consisted of ten questions regarding the ASFV. Among them, we investigated participants’ general understanding of the epidemic. The last few questions focus on their knowledge about the economic compensation for farmers from the government and Chinese government's measures taken against the fever.
So far, 106 online responses have been collected. According to the data from the questionnaire, 78% of people have heard of African swine fever and most of them are informed by news. However, most of those participants have little or almost no further understanding of the virus. As the data showed that 49.06% of people thought that human will be infected by ASFV, which in fact is not true. From those responses, we concluded that the majority of the general public still don't understand the characteristics of African swine fever virus, and the specific measures taken by government agencies are not known to the public.
Based on these survey results, we decided to adopt online & offline approaches to host education events to proliferate the right knowledge on ASFV to the general public, ranging from short essays posted on our official WeChat account, to offline community lectures and to offiline public relation events. (The detailed documentation, please see the public engagement and education section)
Regarding the second part about the marketing research about our ASFV test paper, we firstly interviewed Dr. Chaoguang Ma, Director of Effective Research of Zoetis Animal Vaccine Company. Based on his profound experience in animal vaccine research and ASFV virus, he introduced the current popular products for testing African swine fever on the market. According to Dr. Ma, most of current testing methods are heavily related on specialized testing equipment and procedures.
Even though there is a few ASFV test papers in the market, which do not rely on testing equipment in the lab, they can only test antigen. Thus, Dr. Ma encouraged us to proceed with our ASFV test paper, functional in testing DNA of virus.
We also interviewed Mr. Zhang, a manager of a chain restaurant in Shanghai to see if we may there is a potential cooperation between our ASFV test papers with restaurant. He said: “the government is extremely strict about ASFV recently, therefore, it has not yet effect their business since their supply line is not influenced.” He also implied that if we have a powerful ASFV test tool, we may try to collaborate directly with the government.
To summarize, through a series of survey and expert interview, we reach the conclusion that there is a great market niche for a convenient and effective ASFV test paper, whose principal consumers should be government and pig-raising households. Meanwhile, sufficient education about ASFV towards the general public will also be necessary to contribute to establishing a good social atmosphere for ASFV prevention and control.
Execution:
We offer ASFV (African Swine Fever Virus) test papers featured with precision, simplicity and high efficiency.
Problem Worth Solving
ASFV is the major cause of ASF (African Swine Fever). As a tough virus, ASFV infects all kinds of domestic pigs, Sus scrofa and Potamochoerus. ASF is acute, thermal, highly contagious and fatal animal infection. According to the latest Price Index issued by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO), the global pork price has encountered the largest increase in latest 15 years since the outbreak of ASF in 2017 in Russia. Currently, there is no vaccine available. Meanwhile, China has the largest pig population in the world (433 million) and represents over half of the global pig herd. Influenced by ASF, the pork price in China has increased over 50% since Sept. 2018. Therefore, it is necessary to come up with a quick detection method to control the spreading of this fatal infection.
Our Solution
We try to invent an innovative ASFV quick detection method, relying on which users are able to test the existence of ASFV by a simple test paper, a small dose of reagent and a small heater. The application will be very straightforward and easy to conduct. An user only needs to mix the subject sample with a small dose of reagent and then place it on a heater which provides a constant temperature around 65 ºC for 30 minutes. Afterwards, the heated subject sample should be placed on our invented test paper. In about 1 minute, the test paper will tell us the results. Just like the following the picture, the left two test papers with one bars indicate that the subject sample has not been infected with ASFV, while the right one with two bars indicate that the subject has been infected with ASFV unfortunately.
We decide to focus on China’s domestic market and then spread our products towards the global market, like Russia, Poland and Europe.
The primary reason that we choose to focus on China’s domestic market is that China has the largest pig population in the world (433 million) and represents over half of the global pig herd. According to 2018 China Statistics Yearbook, there are about 26 million pig-raising household in China, however, the households with a higher annual production capacity over 500 pigs only occupy less than 1% of the total households. The distribution of pig-raising households provide a higher risk of disease prevention and control. Therefore, our ASFV quick test paper will be in need by these households to fight against ASF.
In addition, China’s government has also focusing on encouraging biotechnology firms to research into ASFV quick detection methods. Chinese Center for Animal Disease Prevention and Control has already organized two evaluation events for quick detection methods, in which 34 biotechnology companies have participated. (http://111.205.51.12/sites/MainSite/tzgg/tz/201906/P020190612369558629742.pdf) We consider it may be a great signal from official supervisions of encouraging the research and innovation of ASFV quick detection methods. The government may also issue supportive policies to encourage our research & development.
According to the disclosed information by Chinese Center for Animal Disease Prevention and Control, the 34 companies qualified for ASFV quick detection are mainly divided into two categories, the one adopts fluorescence ration PCR instrument and the other one adopts
Isothermal Amplification Technology. Compared with them, our ASFV quick detection test paper has following advantages:
1.Quickness, our test paper will tell us the results in about half an hour while the current existing methods usually produce the testing results in about 2-4 hours;
2.Convenience, our test paper does not rely on delicate experimental instruments or lab environment, while the existing methods need PCR or other instruments to produce the results;
3.Acuteness and precision, we estimate that our test paper will achieve the correction rate above 90%;
4.Cost-beneficial, we primarily decide to sell it at 1 USD per piece.
We divided our sales channels into two major categories:
1.Government: we will organize a team majoring dealing with government relations to lobby the local Animal Disease Prevention and Control agencies into accepting our products.
2.Pig-raising households: we will organize a group of sales representatives to visit all levels of pig-raising households to sell our products.
We will invite some professors from Chinese Academy of Sciences and other distinguished research institutes to host some public speech on ASFV, in which we will also publicize the concept of our products;
We will also send some free trial test paper to government and pig-raising households to establish cooperation and to win their recognition.
Since we need to put a test paper in a device for better transportation and application, the cost of which is about 0.18 USD, therefore , altogether the cost for a test paper is about 0.21 USD.
We estimate that 20% of the pig-raising households will become our customers, namely 5.2 million households will become our target and each household will buy 200 test papers, which in together will be 1.04 billion USD. We plan to realize this gross sales in 4 years:
The 1st year we plan to realize 0.1 billion, the 2nd year we plan to realize 0.2 billion, the 3rd year we plan to realize 0.3 billion, and the 4th year we plan to realize 0.44 billion.
We estimate the gross sales and marketing cost may occupy 30% of the gross sales, therefore, in each year the gross sales and marketing cost should be 0.03 billion, 0.06 billion, 0.09 billion, 0.132 billion.
We estimate the gross human capital and administration cost may occupy 20% of the gross sales, therefore, in each year the gross human capital and administration cost should be 0.02 billion, 0.04 billion, 0.06 billion, 0.088 billion.
Management Team: CEO、CFO、CMO、CTO
Business Unit: Government Affairs Director, Pig-rising Household Director, Chief Research Director, Production Manager