Article
Representative monitoring on consumption of antibiotics in livestock
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Published: | November 12, 2007 |
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Context: Every use of antibiotic effective substances in veterinary medicine may result in the appearance of resistant bacteria. In Germany, no reliable data exist for the assessment of the consumption volume in livestock.
Aim of the study: A method to record representatively consumption volumes of antibiotics in livestock will be developed. Data will be sampled via statutory documents concerning treatment of animals and delivery of drugs to livestock owners. The problems of data collection in veterinary practices and in farms as well as processing and transmission of these data to the responsible federal authorities will be considered.
Material and methods: In Lower Saxony, 30 veterinary practices, and in North Rhine-Westphalia, 100 farms will take part at the study. The study period includes 1 September 2006 until 31 August 2007.
On the farms, antibiotic treatment has to be documented in a “farm book”, whereas the veterinary practices must fulfil a form when treating animals or handing out drugs to farm owners. These data will be collected online into a central database system.
For each antibiotic several parameters are registered concerning the drug (substance and trade name), kind, number and age of animals, duration of application, indication, etc.
Results: To date we have developed a computer based system capable to collect the huge amount of data. Furthermore the data are analyzed immediately regarding missing details in the input form. Parameters concerning the drug application are checked simultaneously.
Discussion: The developed system should be part of a useful study concept for data collection and analysis.
At the end of the sampling period, the data will be analysed with respect to antibiotic consumption in different animal species, the compliance of the data as well as to estimations of consumption of antibiotics for the whole study region.