Antibiotics in livestock farming

Concept developed for recording consumption quantities

How many antibiotics are used in livestock farming? And which active ingredients are used in which quantities? In order to provide answers to these questions, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment commissioned the study "VetCAb" - a feasibility study to show how the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry can be measured. In the long term, the data should help to reduce resistance to antibiotics, since the wrong and excessive use of drugs, the development of resistance is favored.

Scientists from the Institute of Biometry, Epidemiology and Information Processing of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (TiHo) and the Institute of Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Toxicology of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Leipzig have jointly developed a concept with which the data on the use of antibiotics with as low as possible Expense can be recorded. Over a period of one year, they have recorded the records of 24 veterinary practices in five counties of Lower Saxony and 66 farms in North Rhine-Westphalia in a central database and finally reviewed the concept of data collection. It was important for them to work out what information is suitable for assessing the quantities consumed and whether such a concept can be implemented.

The idea of ​​the concept is to collect data that veterinarians and farmers have already collected. Veterinarians must fill out drug application and drug delivery receipts for medicines they administer or dispense. Farmers enter the information in their barn books. The scientists collected this data in a central database developed by the University of Leipzig. It has an input mask with which the scientists could enter the data directly over the Internet.

All data was collected in pseudonymised form in compliance with the requirements of data protection laws. By linking the database with the veterinary information service for drug use, toxicology and drug law VETIDATA, the type and amount of the active ingredient contained in the information on the drugs used could be calculated.

"The planned monitoring should only record which antibiotics are used and how often," explains Dr. Roswitha Merle from the Institute of Biometry, Epidemiology and Information Processing at TiHo "it neither serves to control the veterinarians nor to comply with the antibiotic guidelines or the administration of prohibited substances". The supervisory authorities are responsible for control tasks. In a subsequent study, practices and companies should now be selected so that the results are representative of their region and overall of Germany.

Source: Hanover [THH]