Measure and monitor: why record on-farm antibiotic use

Developed by AHDB, the Medicine Hub helps dairy, beef and sheep producers monitor and compare medicine use and tackle antimicrobial resistance. Charlotte Grime, Engagement and Communications Manager for Medicine Hub, explains more.

You have probably heard about Medicine Hub, the industry-wide initiative that is setting out to gather medicine data from cattle and sheep enterprises in the UK. This information is really important to demonstrate to customers, processors, retailers and international trading partners, the high standards that farmers work to throughout the country.

"Producers in the UK adhere to some of the most rigorous and robust production standards around and work hard to achieve high levels of health and welfare as well as low antibiotic use, something the industry is rightly proud of," says vet Mandy Nevel, who works at AHDB and has been instrumental in the development of Medicine Hub.

"However, even though individual farms must record medicine use, until now there has been no central online resource for doing so at a national level, something that is set to change with Medicine Hub. And it's worth noting that even if you have used no antibiotics in the last calendar year, this information is important to capture."

Vets, together with farmers, set ambitious targets for antibiotic use that have been adopted by the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance (RUMA) targets task force. For dairy, a target of 95% of UK farms centrally reporting antibiotic use by 2024 has been set, something that is ambitious but realistic, provided the industry acts now.

Some milk buyers already include this requirement in their contracts with farmers. Dorset dairy farmer James Yeatman supplies the Tesco Sustainable Dairy Group and worked with his vet, Tom Clarke of Synergy Farm Health, during March to upload the herd's data onto Medicine Hub.

In 2022, Tesco was the first retailer to ask farmers to work directly with their vets to upload records to Medicine Hub. Tom Atkins, Tesco Agriculture Manager for dairy and beef, explains why:

"Tesco is a strong supporter of Medicine Hub, and we've encouraged all of our Tesco Sustainable Dairy Group farmers to use it. By reporting their usage, TSDG farmers are helping to drive industry change in the responsible use and reduction of antibiotics."

Grange Farm is 300 hectares near Pulham and has been run as a closed herd for 30 years. James has a milking herd of 400 averaging 10,500 litres and runs around 200 followers as well. The herd antibiotic use is very low, with selective dry cow therapy meaning only 5% of cows receive an antibiotic at drying off and mastitis treatments during lactation are also very low. Overall, antibiotic usage for the last year has been around 5 mg/kg, significantly lower than is typical in UK dairy herds.

"We have been passionate about monitoring, measuring and reducing antibiotic use for over 10 years and have worked hard to reduce use," says James. "A family member contracted Lyme's disease and had to have three weeks of daily 100ml intravenous antibiotics to help recover. At the same time, due to the extra work and stress on me, due to the extra running about while he was in hospital, I managed to contract pneumonia, which also meant some pretty heavy-duty antibiotic therapy.

"It really brought home to me how important it is to protect antibiotics and prolong their efficacy for human health," James explains.

Vet Tom Clarke adds: "We have been working closely with James and his team to target the underlying causes of disease and reduce the need to use antibiotics. This has been a mixture of management activities: working on the milking routine, managing on-farm mastitis culture system to triage treatments, improving the cubicle and cow/calf shed environment, supporting Charlie King, the farm's nutritionist, and improving transition management for a healthier cow after calving."

The benefit of monitoring antibiotic use at the farm level is the ability to compare year-on-year how improvements made on farm directly reduce antibiotic use. "This internal benchmarking is a really helpful motivator for change on farms and Medicine Hub will allow even more useful comparisons within vet practices to demonstrate how clients on equivalent farming systems compare to each other," Tom explains.

"It's a real team effort here at Grange Farm, with Tom regularly involved in planning and decision-making alongside our herdsman, Gary, and me," says James.

"When it came to Medicine Hub, we could immediately understand its relevance and importance to both the industry as a whole, in order to demonstrate and prove responsible use and, separately, for our herd," he says. "Gathering the information means that records can be interrogated to see where antibiotics are used and why. If needs be, management can be tweaked to make improvements here and there as a result. Understanding when it is ok not to treat is as important to us as understanding when treatment is necessary."

Tom Clarke explains the process: "The medicine use data for the farm is transferred onto Medicine Hub via the vet practice's computer records. The software can share data with Medicine Hub making it hassle-free for the farmer and meaning that the practice can upload all client data, once the appropriate third-party permissions have been granted.

"We are often asked by clients about the data - who gets to see it, where is it shared and so on. Only you and your vet can access your account and see all the information; beyond that, anything reported by Medicine Hub is aggregated and anonymised. It is always controlled by the farmer and will only be shared onwards if specific permission is given for that to happen," Tom Clarke concludes.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.