Active animal health surveillance in European Union Member States: gaps and opportunities

Abstract

3 SUMMARYAnimal health surveillance enables the detection and control of animal diseases including zoonoses.Under the EU-FP7 project RISKSUR, a survey was conducted in 11 EU Member States and Switzerland to describe active surveillance components in 2011 managed by the public or private sector and identify gaps and opportunities. Information was collected about the hazard, target population, geographical focus, legal obligation, management, surveillance design, risk-based sampling, and multi-hazard surveillance. Two countries were excluded due to incompleteness of data. Most of the 664 components targeted cattle (26.7%), pigs (17.5%) or poultry (16.0%). The most common surveillance objectives were demonstrating freedom from disease (43.8%) and case detection (26.8%). Over half of components applied risk-based sampling (57.1%), but mainly focused on a single population stratum (targeted risk-based) rather than differentiating between risk levels of different strata (stratified risk-based). About a third of components were multi-hazard (37.3%). Both risk-based sampling and multi-hazard surveillance were used more frequently in privately funded components. The study identified several gaps (e.g. lack of systematic documentation, inconsistent application of terminology) and opportunities (e.g. stratified risk-based sampling). The greater flexibility provided by the new EU Animal Health Law means that systematic evaluation of surveillance alternatives will be required to optimize cost-effectiveness. 4

The applicability of animal health surveillance systems for post-market monitoring of potential adverse effects of genetically modified (GM) feed

“…Also outside the EU, regulatory authorities in charge of safety assessment of GM foods and feeds consider the possible need for post-market monitoring under specific circumstances. For example, an animal health system which aims purely to determine the prevalence of an endemic disease will be set up entirely differently from a surveillance system aimed at establishing freedom from disease or early warning of an emerging concern (10). Below, we review the different types of surveillance systems that might be of relevance for the purpose of providing input to postmarket livestock health monitoring initiatives.…”

“…This is the case in the context of animal health diseases as well as potential adverse effects of GM feed. Surveillance systems currently in place are largely specific to a single disease and difficult to adapt to general conditions (10). Furthermore reporting is variable between countries and when surveillance is implemented for a specific condition, the usefulness of the data when The search of original research articles was performed using Scopus (34), a large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature using the following search string: TITLE-ABS-KEY ( "genetically modified" OR "genetically engineered" OR biotech* OR transgenic ) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ( cattle OR dairy OR cow* OR goat OR rabbit OR farm* OR fish OR poultry OR chicken OR hen OR pig* OR sheep OR calf ) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ( fed OR feeding OR consumption OR diet ) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ( maize OR corn OR rice OR soybean OR soya OR rapeseed OR potato ).…”

The use of animals as a surveillance tool for monitoring environmental health hazards, human health hazards and bioterrorism

“…A likely reason is that human and animal health surveillance efforts mostly stem from disparate initiatives, resulting in data being kept in entirely separate databases (Scotch et al, 2009). There is thus an increasing need for interdisciplinary integration between human and veterinary medicine, and communication before we can completely exploit the benefits of animals for surveillance (Bisdorff et al, 2016;Wendt et al, 2015). To this end, committees have been established to increase awareness of the mutual reliance between human, animal, plant, microbial, and ecosystem health (Rabinowitz et al, 2013).…”

Farm animal health : progress, problems and perspectives

“…The base of this collaborative effort was the start of the GD animal health surveillance programmes, where early signs of health issues were pro-actively obtained through the use of 'big' data analysis (Veldhuis et al 2016), development of a phone consultancy system for farmers and veterinarians and subsidizing the use of pathology across all farm animal species (Bisdorff et al 2017). This surveillance programme has shown its effectiveness in the last fifteen years.…”