Evaluation of the usefulness at national level of the dairy cattle health and production recording systems in Great Britain

Abstract

17The aim of this study was to formally evaluate, qualitatively, the ability of existing recording

Herd-level prevalence of selected endemic infectious diseases of dairy cows in Great Britain

“…With this in mind, the present study was designed to provide prevalence estimates representative of the national GB dairy herd for several nonstatutory infectious diseases assumed endemic. Bovine tuberculosis, although identified as important during the workshop, was not included in the study due to the fact that existing mandatory surveillance provides reliable information on its occurrence at the national level (Velasova et al, 2015). Participation in the study was voluntary; however, when compared nationally, although the estimated weighted average herd size of 187 cows was slightly higher than that of 144 cows for the GB dairy herd, the estimated average annual milk yield was comparable with the national estimate of 7,535 L (DairyCo, 2013).…”

“…Selection of specific pathogens was based on the results of a workshop run by the Royal Veterinary College in April 2012. In the workshop, the participants were asked to identify and rank cattle health conditions considered important for individual farmers and the dairy industry for which no reliable and up-to-date nationwide estimates were available (Velasova et al, 2015). Additionally, 5 more pathogens for which no upto-date nationwide estimates were identified that could be detected using bulk milk samples and were included.…”

“…This is because, for the majority of endemic diseases, no active disease surveillance is in place. Several private and public routine recording systems exist; however, at the national level, the information they provide is likely to be biased (Velasova et al, 2015).…”

“…This is because, for the majority of endemic diseases, no active disease surveillance is in place. Several private and public routine recording systems exist; however, at the national level, the information they provide is likely to be biased (Velasova et al, 2015).In addition to these ongoing recording systems, oneoff surveys are often carried out (Davison et al, 2005;Salimi-Bejestani et al, 2005;Woodbine et al, 2009b); although useful, their results should be interpreted with caution because of issues such as nonprobabilistic selection of studied farms (Paton et al, 1998;Woodbine et al, 2009b;Williams and Winden, 2014) and failure to adjust prevalence estimates for the study design (Paton et al, 1998) or for test performance (Davison et al, 2005;Woodbine et al, 2009a;Williams and Winden, 2014). Furthermore, one-off studies are only useful for a limited period of time, as the prevalence can change as a result of the implementation of control measures and changes in the dairy industry, the more apparent of which are increased herd size, genetic selection, and application of new technological innovations (Barkema et al, 2015).…”

Methodological challenges to multivariate syndromic surveillance: a case study using Swiss animal health data

“…It is important to recognise that timeliness should not be treated as the be all and end all of SyS. A fully electronic system built around a centralised database is still of limited value if the system is not reliable (functioning without fail) or accurate (complete and correct) [98] (see point 2 above). Finally, point 3 is not trivial given that the understanding of the relationships between different data streams can be poor when data are sparse and the events under consideration (such as disease outbreaks) occur infrequently.…”