Research has shown that vets maintain that anything that could speed up diagnosis would be a huge advantage on farms.
However, as new European Union (EU) regulations come into force, Irish veterinarians are under “increasing pressure to prescribe antimicrobials more responsibly”.
This is according to new research published in the Irish Veterinary Journal, after data was collected through focus groups consisting of dairy farmers, agricultural advisors and farm animal veterinarians.
The aim to reduce the overall sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals by 50% by 2030 will require a more strategic use of vaccinations to prevent diseases and more timely diagnosis of animal illnesses to ensure appropriate antimicrobial use.
Maintaining good animal health status in Irish herds and controlling and preventing disease outbreaks on farms will become essential.
This can be achieved via early diagnosis of animal health issues, signalling the need for more adequate animal health testing practices on Irish farms.
However, there are limitations on the range of on-farm tests available, and as farmers and vets determine which cases to submit to Regional Veterinary Laboratories (RVLs) for testing, there is a risk that under-reporting of cases and lack of engagement with testing procedures by farmers and veterinarians could impact disease prevalence on farm.
Research has explored factors which affect farmer and veterinarian engagement with animal health testing, some of which include type of case, influence of the veterinarian, inconvenient RVL opening hours, distance of farm to the RVL, and past issues with RVL services including receiving inconclusive results, long wait times in receiving test results, or not receiving test results at all.
Allowing vets to achieve rapid diagnosis
Researchers determined that the development of an on-farm testing tool would help to allow veterinarians to achieve rapid diagnosis, and facilitate the timely and targeted treatment of animal illnesses, helping to reduce overall antimicrobial use on farms.
However, engagement with end users has highlighted that if a tool like this is not developed correctly, it could have unintended negative consequences such as misdiagnosis, increased antimicrobial use, challenges to farmer-veterinarian relationships, and data misuse.
It is anticipated the tool will be a handheld device which uses biological sensors to perform on the spot sample testing which traditionally would need to take place in an RVL.
These sensors will be able to determine whether a sample is positive or negative for an animal illness or disease, through its ability to identify and detect antibodies in that sample.
The research contended that successful development and integration of this tool could have positive effects for the Irish agricultural industry, as it eliminates wait times for blood results returning from labs and assists vets in diagnosing and treating sick animals quickly and correctly at the time of call-out.
It would aid vets in determining the correct (if any) antimicrobials to be administered, eliminating unnecessary use of antimicrobials and safeguarding our critical antimicrobials to only be used when absolutely necessary.
This would tackle antimicrobial resistance issues and improve animal health and welfare standards on Irish farms.
Participants in the research expressed the same key need; to quickly find out what the illness is and what exactly is causing it, so that they can accurately and quickly treat it.