Antibiotics roadmap can solve data dilemma, says NSA

National Sheep Association (NSA) welcomes the UK Ruminant Antibiotic Stewardship Roadmap and its call for a national reporting framework. Both will help the sheep sector prove its low antibiotics use with robust data.

NSA has helped shape the roadmap, which launched today at British Cattle Veterinary Association (BCVA) Congress. NSA contributed through the Sheep Antibiotic Guardian Group and an online farmer discussion session.

NSA policy is for antibiotics use on sheep farms to be judicious; “as little as possible, and as much as necessary”. In most cases, many sheep systems are low users of antibiotics as shown by the data of the Welsh Lamb and Beef Producers and individual records of progressive farmers and vets who collate and record this data. The aim of the roadmap is to gather evidence to show that what we as an industry know to be true is actually the case.

UK sheep farming is largely extensive and low input. Sheep are kept on more than 65,000 holdings in Great Britain alone, across a wide variety of systems. This diversity is a strength for the industry. It also makes a single approach to data collection harder to achieve.
The UK roadmap seeks to support the industry with the following recommendations:

• Develop a UK-wide minimum dataset and national reporting framework with flexibility for devolved nations.
• Use anonymised antimicrobial Usage (AMU) data supplied by dispensing veterinary practices and pharmacies and then reported through AHDB's Medicine Hub.
• Support annual, veterinary-led farm reviews based on trusted and confidential farmer-veterinarian conversations, underpinned by more detailed data.
• Use those reviews to support continuous improvement in disease resilience, biosecurity, vaccination, diagnostics and husbandry.

Michael Priestley NSA Policy Manager says: “AMU data provision could become a requirement of assurance schemes or government initiatives, so it is imperative that industry works to develop solutions that work on farm. Medicine Hub has been developed to store this data, and it is by working with Medicine Hub that it can be improved.”