Antimicrobial prescription data in Danish national database validated against treatment records in organic pig farms and analysed for associations with lesions found at slaughter

摘要

BackgroundAntimicrobial use (AMU) in livestock is a debated topic, mainly due to the risk of associated development of antimicrobial resistance. There is focus on reducing AMU in the Danish pig production, which accounts for the largest proportion of AMU for animals in Denmark. Due to special restriction on AMU in organic pig production, the AMU in organic pig production is lower than in conventional pig production. There is concern that reduced AMU could jeopardize animal health and welfare, if it reflects insufficient treatment of sick animals, which might be reflected by the prevalence and types of lesions found at meat inspection. However, little is known about the associations between AMU and meat inspection findings in pigs from organic farms. Furthermore, excess amount of antimicrobial product after a treatment cannot be re-prescribed in organic pig herds. The initial prescription is recorded in the national database VetStat, but the unused amount is not deducted leading to uncertainty when reporting AMU. The objectives of this study were to 1) describe AMU patterns based on prescription data for organic pig production and compare with those of the conventional pig production for year 2016, 2) study the associations between herd-level AMU prescription data and meat inspection data for organic pig herds and 3) validate herd-level AMU prescription data in VetStat against treatment records collected on-farm in organic Danish pig herds.