Christine Fourichon spoke at the SPACE Rendez-Vous de l'INRA on "Towards integrated animal health management for efficient cattle and pig farms".
Integrated livestock health management begins by taking into account all animal health issues. At the company and commodity chain level, they are translated into performance objectives, integrated at the farm level. Faced with this complexity, the levers for action integrate knowledge and innovations to make practices evolve and enable better animal health and the reduction of treatments.
The four challenges of health management: respect for animals, the economy, public health, the environment, etc.
The first expected result is respect for animals: it is a question of having animals that are healthy, or if they are sick, that the effects on their welfare are limited. This means being able to both prevent and effectively treat diseases.
Health management methods aim to reduce the impact of disease on the performance and economics of livestock farming, but they have a cost. It is therefore a question of integrating the full impact of health management into the economics of farms and value chains.
Risks to human health linked to animals are much better controlled than in the past. Zoonotic diseases have clearly regressed, chemical contaminants due to treatments are closely monitored and compliance with the rules ensures that humans are not exposed. It remains to be vigilant on the risk of emergence and transfer of antibiotic resistance to bacteria dangerous for humans. One way of controlling this is to drastically reduce the use of antibiotics for animals.
Risks for the environment include both the direct effects of health management (e.g. the effects of the use of pesticides on soil biodiversity), but also indirect effects on the health of ecosystems linked to chemical or biological contamination (treatment residues, pathogens, resistance genes).
Targeting treatments to the animals that need them most at the most effective time
Gastrointestinal nematode parasiticides are often routinely administered to cattle to limit production losses and prevent the development of parasitic diseases. Their use can be greatly reduced by targeted and selective use, and the timing of administration and the animals to be treated are selected by measuring the exposure of the animals and estimating the immunity they may have developed [5]. There are three main interests in this measure:
- economical: reduce treatment costs without affecting herd performance,
- sanitary: to limit parasitosis and preserve the long-term effectiveness of parasiticides by limiting resistance,
- environmental: reducing the effect of pesticides on ecosystems.
Optimize animal husbandry to reduce the use of antibiotics
Faced with incentives to reduce the use of antibiotics, channels have been organized to target the main causes. However, the responses obtained vary widely between farms. In comparable production systems, it is interesting to try to understand what distinguishes the farms that have been able to achieve a sharp reduction in their use. In pig farming, for example, it has been shown that technical improvements to reduce risks have led to progress, but often after phases of alternating success and failure [4]. Long time and support for farmers were then crucial to long-term results. And the mastery of certain alternative techniques to previous uses was also a barrier that needed to be removed (for example, controlling specific treatments in drinking water).
Proposing appropriate interventions and evaluating their long-term results
Being able to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions in real livestock situations is crucial. This implies integrating the latest knowledge to know all the possibilities [1]. It also means adapting interventions to the specific situation of each farm. It also allows the results to be evaluated, both in terms of feasibility and adoption, technical efficiency, cost and economic profitability. An intervention adapted to the individual situation of each farm resulted in good compliance (e.g. >90% of the recommended measures in 70 pig farms), a substantial reduction in antibiotic use (almost 50%) and an improvement or maintenance of the economic result in two thirds of the cases [2].
Proposing innovations for health monitoring
Innovations can also be organizational. Surveys in organic cattle farming have sought to identify the barriers to progress on health. The objectives of farmers are in fact insufficiently taken into account by their veterinarians and advisers. An innovative method has been proposed to build and monitor commonly defined indicators, taking into account both the main health areas to be monitored and the priority success and monitoring criteria specific to each farmer [3]. Reconciling the input of scientific knowledge with the individual situation and objectives of each farmer has led to better monitoring of herd health and an increased ability to correct herd management to reduce risks.
Avenues for tomorrow's innovations
- Adapt the design of farming systems to reduce risks. Some systems can be redesigned because critical steps make it difficult to control risks without treatment, for example when animals of different origins are batched together when their vulnerability is increased.
- Predicting and enhancing animal robustness. Beyond selected performances, animals show heterogeneous responses to risks. Indicators predicting better robustness will be useful for adapting interventions, and in the long term selecting more robust animals.
- Early detection of diseases to intervene more effectively. This is all the more important as farm sizes increase. Automation and advances in digital technology offer opportunities to improve animal surveillance. Health indicators will have to provide reliable methods that are sensitive enough to ensure secure monitoring, but above all specific enough to provide appropriate alerts.
Research allows innovation for a more integrated management of animal health. The many prospects should continue to move animal husbandry towards multi-performance.
References
[1] Ariza J. M., Relun A., Bareille N., Oberle K., Guatteo R. 2017. Effectiveness of collective treatments in the prevention and treatment of bovine digital dermatitis lesions: A systematic review. Journal of Dairy Science, 100(9):7401-7418 DOI: 10.3168/jds.2016-11875.
[2] Collineau L., Rojo-Gimeno C., Léger A., Backhans A., Loesken S., Okholm Nielsen E., Postma M., Emanuelson U., Grosse Beilage E., Sjölund M., Wauters E., Stärk K.D.C., Dewulf J., Belloc C., Krebs S., 2016. Herd-specific interventions to reduce antimicrobial usage in pig production without jeopardising technical and economic performance. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 144:167–178, DOI: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2017.05.023
[3] Duval J. E., Fourichon C., Madouasse A., Sjöström K., Emanuelson U., Bareille N., 2016. A participatory approach to design monitoring indicators of production diseases in organic dairy farms. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 128:12-22, DOI: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2016.04.001
[4] Fortané N., Bonnet-Beaugrand F., Hémonic A., Samedi C., Savy A., Belloc C. 2015. Learning Processes and Trajectories for the Reduction of Antibiotic Use in Pig Farming: A Qualitative Approach. Antibiotics, 4(4):435 DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics4040435.
[5] Ravinet N., Lehébel A., Bareille N., Lopez C., Chartier C., Chauvin A., Madouasse A. 2017. Design and evaluation of multi-indicator profiles for targeted-selective treatment against gastrointestinal nematodes at housing in adult dairy cows. Veterinary Parasitology, 237:17-29. DOI: 10.1016/j.vetpar.2017.03.001.
Contacts
Scientific contact :
Associated Department : Santé animale
Associated Centre : Pays de la Loire, Bretagne-Normandie
