The impact of liver fluke infection on steers in Ireland: A meta-analytic approach

To treat or not to treat: diagnostic thresholds in subclinical helminth infections of cattle

Helminth infections of cattle place significant burdens on livestock production and farm economic efficiency. Heavy infections are relatively easy to detect and treat with anthelmintics. However, subclinical infections have major but often hidden impacts on animals, necessitating more refined diagnostics to detect them and ideally inform farmers about the likely impact of anthelmintic treatment on animal and herd performance. Here, we review recent advances in diagnosing three major cattle helminth infections - gastrointestinal nematodes (GINs), liver flukes, and lungworms - and the search for subclinical infection thresholds to guide treatment decisions. Combining refined diagnostic thresholds with farm-specific information on grazing systems and animal history enables farmers to tailor helminth treatments to specific epidemiological circumstances, thereby limiting anthelmintic resistance (AR) and boosting agricultural efficiency and food security.

Stakeholder perceptions of non-regulatory bovine health issues in Ireland: past and future perspectives

Background

In recent years, there have been multiple (political, environmental, cultural) drivers of change in Irish agriculture, including the establishment of Animal Health Ireland (AHI) in 2009, to provide leadership of non-regulatory livestock health issues (diseases and conditions of livestock that are endemic in Ireland but which are not currently subject to international legislation). In this study, we describe the opinion of stakeholders (farmers, veterinary practitioners and agricultural industry professional service providers), elicited by means of a survey, on their perceptions of changes in selected non-regulatory bovine health issues over the last 10 years and priority issues relevant to non-regulatory bovine health to be tackled over the next 10 years.

Results

A total of 673 individuals participated in the online questionnaire. For the majority of the non-regulatory bovine health issues, most participants felt there had been improvements over the last 10 years. However, professional service providers were generally more conservative in their response to improvements on-farm compared to farmers. Several issues, particularly BVD and udder health/milk quality, were viewed more positively by all relevant respondents. There was reasonable agreement between responses from different respondent types and sectors regarding the top three priorities relevant to non-regulatory bovine animal health for the next 10 years in Ireland, which included antimicrobial resistance (highlighting measures to reduce both on-farm usage and resistance), anthelmintic resistance, greenhouse emissions and calf welfare.

Conclusions

The results are encouraging, demonstrating a perception of improvement in a number of non-regulatory bovine health issues in Ireland over the last ten years. With respect to the next 10 years, stakeholders prioritised antimicrobial and anthelmintic resistance, greenhouse gas emissions and calf welfare, which aligns closely with broader societal concerns. This information is useful to AHI, particularly with respect to future priorities. However, these concerns are broad in scope and will require further considerations, including collaborations, between AHI and partnering organisations. Given that there were differences between farmers and professional service providers in responses, it is useful to consider how the aims and the benefits of future AHI programmes are framed and communicated to all stakeholders.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13620-020-00178-8.