Promoting Animal Health

Healthy animals are strong and do not need drugs. The promotion of animal health by farmers and veterinary surgeons represents a paradigm shift and places the emphasis on prevention. Aspects of promoting animal health include genetics, farming practices, feeding, hygiene and management.

Projects

There are a number of different ways in which the Federal Office for Agriculture can provide financial support to innovative agricultural projects. Farmers volunteer to take part in such projects.
Resource projects are a way of testing new approaches to the question of how agricultural resources (e.g. soil) can be used more efficiently.

Under the Ordinance on the Promotion of Quality and Sustainability in the Agriculture and Food Sector (OQuSo), innovative projects which offer added value in the areas of sustainability or quality and which increase long-term agricultural value creation, can be given grants. The objective of the QuNaV is to promote innovation in the agri-food sector in order to raise competitiveness.

Kometian

Kometian has been active since January 2012 and is in its 4th pilot year. Over a dozen veterinary surgeons and animal therapists with recognised further training or certified training in complementary medicine provide twenty-four hour telephone support to livestock farmers seeking advice. Since 2016 Kometian has been supported by a resource project and further developed, and the impact of advice has been scientifically evaluated.

Service of calf health

The aim of the project is to strengthen in a sustainable way the production sector of rearing and fattening cattle which is important traditionally and for market regulation. Improving animal health is of key importance here. The establishment of a calf health service on the initiative of producers is intended to herald a paradigm shift towards increasingly replacing the present group and individual treatment of sick animals with extensive systematic stock care using evidence-based prevention concepts.
The reduction of producers’ economic losses due to acute or chronic illnesses and deaths among calves should considerably improve profitability in the calf sector, lead to greater animal welfare and reduce the socially critical use of antibiotics in the rearing and fattening of calves or cattle by at least 50% in 6 years. This is a way of creating an animal-friendly, socially accepted and long-term economically sustainable basis for calf and beef fattening in Switzerland.

S. aureus GTB

The major objective of the project is to reduce the use of antibiotics, to improve milk quality and to lower operating costs by eradicating cases of mastitis, which in dairy cattle in the Canton of Ticino are caused by Staphilococcus aureus Genotype B. This infectious mastitis pathogen is strongly associated with the udder and can be transmitted from one cow to another via milking apparatus. Reorganisation measures should enable affected farms to reach an infection prevalence of 0. The aim of the project is reorganisation throughout the Canton of Ticino.

Rupromi- Swiss Schweine

Traceability at the level of individual pigs is allowing new approaches to moving animals, management, feeding, quality and breeding. In order to ensure quality, data on medicines, animal health, biosafety and performance data are gathered. Data on feeding and slaughter can help to breed animals which have better feed efficiency and thus place less of a strain on the environment.

Contributions to animal welfare

Research

The National Research Programme "Antibiotic Resistance" (NFP 49) had the task of developing methods and strategies for creating a continuous monitoring system and of drawing up an overview of the present situation in Switzerland regarding antibiotic resistance among bacteria which originate in humans and animals, agriculture, foods and the environment. This research programme gave rise to monitoring by the Swiss Centre for Antibiotic Resistance (anresis.ch).

It is generally not known in what organisms and locations antibiotic resistance arises and how resistance is spread between the environment, animals and people.

That is why the National Research Programme „Antimicrobial Resistance“ (NFP 72), which was put out to public tender, is particularly intended to improve knowledge about possible source locations of resistance genes and their transmission mechanisms, to develop new fast diagnosis techniques and to propose intervention measures. To this end it takes a holistic, cross-disciplinary one-health approach.

Veterinary medicines

Veterinary medicines help to ensure and increase the production of animal foods. They contribute to animal welfare by preventing or curing diseases. Health problems and veterinary medicines used for treatment of them differ from one animal category to another. Veterinary medicines enter soils and, to a certain extent, water via animal excreta. Antibiotics and antiparasitic agents are of particular relevance for the environment.

Use of antibiotics can lead to the build-up of resistance which makes successful therapy more difficult or even impossible both in veterinary and human medicine.

Antiparasitic agents are used against parasites such as mites, insects or worms. They can damage related species in the environment, including for example earthworms and beetles.

A number of measures are being taken to reduce the risks caused by the use of veterinary medicines:

For the licensing of veterinary medicines, companies must additionally provide documentation on ecotoxicity (Article 9 of the Therapeutic Products Act TPA).
The Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) and Swissmedic have a monitoring system for the use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine and antibiotic resistance in livestock animals. The use of veterinary medicines is also recorded in agricultural environmental monitoring.
Alongside targeted prevention in the case of specific diseases, animal-friendly farming practices also contribute to animal health. These are promoted through payments for particularly animal-friendly stable systems (BTS) and regular opportunities to move about outdoors (RAUS).
The Swiss Confederation is tackling the problem of increasing antibiotic resistance with a national strategy. This contains 35 measures in eight areas of activity. Implementation, like the original drafting, is carried out in conjunction with the Cantons and other major players.