Publication: VSC / FIIA report on data

Good progress – but data remains a challenge

As part of its efforts towards fighting the global challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the UK livestock industry has made considerable strides in reducing, refining and replacing antibiotic use over the past 10 years, to have among the lowest antibiotic sales in Europe on a mg/kg basis. Furthermore, it has been largely able to demonstrate this through openly publishing product sales data. However, maintaining and reinforcing this leadership position, and making further progress towards ‘responsible use’, will mean addressing challenges around availability and utilisation of data.

Data availability

One such challenge is variability in the availability of nationally collated antibiotic use or prescription data – as opposed to product sales data – which allows a more granular understanding of use in different livestock sectors. For example, while over 90% of such data in each of the UK poultry, pig and aquaculture sectors are collated and reported, 2023 was the first year any centrally collated data were reported for UK dairy, beef and sheep. Even so, these data covered just 28% of UK dairy cows and less than 10% of sheep and beef production. 

These ruminant sectors are complex, lacking the opportunities and infrastructure which made it possible for the more integrated sectors to start reporting national-level antibiotic use/prescription data several years ago. Nonetheless, centralised, national-level data on antibiotic use and prescriptions would allow them to prove their claimed low levels of use, and significantly expand opportunities to benchmark, improve and report progress in a way that sales data, including products with authorisations for many different species, can never achieve. It would also create a level playing field with European dairy, beef and sheep producers who are either mandated now, or will be shortly, to collate these data each year.

Optimising data utilisation

A second challenge is how to make use of opportunities around data utilisation. If antibiotic use and prescription data included target conditions and effectiveness of treatment, this could be combined with disease and resistance surveillance data to help identify patterns. All UK sectors could benefit from exploring this further. 

Despite these many advantages, barriers to data collection, collation and utilisation persist. In the cattle and sheep sectors, farmers (as primary data holders) have not always had adequate communication or consideration of their role, and this has impacted confidence and trust. There are other barriers, including technical (How can data practically be shared?), motivational (Who benefits and how?), and economic (Who pays, and where do commercial databases fit in?), which have hampered progress. Improved transparency around data sharing and permissions, better data ‘literacy’, clarity around the risks and benefits, incentives for data owners, and agreement on the end goal, would all help to address these barriers.

Next steps

The Vet Schools Council and FIIA have investigated the barriers and opportunities to improving responsible use of antibiotics through improved data handling and management. The full report and summary lay report can be downloaded below, but the key recommendations can be summarised as: 

1. Enshrine common principles: The UK farming industry, from farm to fork, should accept and adopt a set of key principles on data sharing and use as an industry standard.
2. Understand barriers to data sharing: A study of barriers to data sharing and use should be undertaken across the UK livestock and aquaculture sectors, and through the various supply chain levels, to identify where issues lie and how they can be overcome.
3. Agree acceptable methods for publishing data: The most appropriate data agreements and publishing methods, processes and bodies should be identified to improve confidence and reciprocity. This may require focus from a cross-industry group.