DISARM’s 5th Newsletter

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Check out our latest update now we are halfway through the project: new resources, a highlight from the community of practice, and some featured projects also working towards less antimicrobial resistance through reduced need and use of antimicrobials in livestock production.

DISARM Newsletter July 2020 EN
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 ES
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 FR
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 GR
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 LV
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 NL
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 RO
DISARM Newsletter July 2020 DK

May 2020: DISARM’s Fourth Newsletter

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This month we share with you some recent updates including our report on model farm health teams, and some interesting content from the community of practice (CoP) covering precision livestock farming and use of antibiotics in organic farming.

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March 2020: DISARM’s Third Newsletter!

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We hope that you and your families are safe and well during this global Covid 19 pandemic. In these challenging times, allow us to share with you some of our activities…

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DISARM participated in EU-Canadian workshop exploring joint research priorities on AMR

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On the 4th and 5th of February, DISARM was represented at a workshop to explore joint research priorities between Canada and the EU on the topic of antimicrobial resistance. The workshop was organized by the Canada-EU PLC Task Force which has the objective to foster coordination between the EU and Canada regarding research on technology, science and innovation.  

In the first part of the workshop, researchers from Canada and the EU presented an overview of the state of the art research being executed on the topic of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). The Canadian researchers presented their research agenda on monogastric and ruminant animals and on the environmental aspect of AMR. In monogastrics a lot of research is going into alternative feeding strategies as alternatives to antibiotics, immune modulation, microbiome manipulation and vaccination. In ruminants the focus lies on the mechanisms of transferring antimicrobial resistance, alternatives to antimicrobial use and specifically on genetic technologies. 

The European research projects presented and discussed were the One Health European Joint Programme, Healthy Livestock, DISARM, ROADMAP, and AVANT. The Healthy Livestock project focuses on intensive production in pigs and poultry, concentrating on reducing the risk for exposure to  pathogens, improving the resilience of pigs and poultry, early warning systems for better animal health management, precision medication technologies and potential alternatives for antibiotics. Similarly, AVANT is a research project which just started to investigate and test potential promising alternatives to prevent and treat post-weaning diarrhoea in pig production. ROADMAP is a research project focusing on socio-economic and institutional innovations that can stimulate or foster the transition to a more prudent use of antimicrobials in the livestock industry.  

In the second part of the workshop, the participants also collaborated on identifying common research priorities. To name a few important ones from the long list of identified priorities:  

  1. More fundamental research to understand the host and (pathogenic) bacterial interactions to see what healthy microbiomes are and how they evolve through the animals’ lifespan and under changing diets and environments 
  2. Rethinking of current risky animal husbandry practices that can lead to AMR and focus on optimal housing conditions, feed and feeding strategies that promote animal health and making us of state-of-the art technologies to support modern stockmanship. 
  3. Socio-economic and institutional incentives to promote and foster prudent antimicrobial usage in the livestock industry. 
  4. Alternatives to antimicrobials to be used in the livestock industry to be able to safeguard and maintain animal health and welfare with lesser need for antibiotics. 
  5. Innovative veterinary diagnostics that can assist animal health professionals in rationalizing the use of antimicrobials in practice.  

We were happy and privileged as DISARM to be able to contribute to this future outlook on necessary internationalresearch on AMR for the benefit of the livestock industry and the global society as a whole.  

January 2020: DISARM’s Second Newsletter

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Happy new year everyone!
In this newsletter we look ahead to DISARM’s Activities in 2020. Check it out in your preferred language:

First Annual Research Prioritisation Report

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Throughout November and December, we collected responses to an online survey to help us understand which areas of research are the most important to help combat antibiotic resistance in Livestock sectors.

You can view the report here:

First DISARM Research Prioritisation Report

Instructive training on biosecurity and application of Biocheck: a risk-based scoring tool for biosecurity on livestock farms

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On 22 and 23 of January 2020, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Ghent University hosted a very instructive and interesting training on biosecurity and the use of their Biocheck, a tool to score and benchmark the biosecurity measures on livestock farms. The training nicely balanced theoretical insights with hands-on practical training and field visits to a farrowing and broiler farm to exercise the use of the Biocheck.

Five principles to biosecurity

Prof. Jeroen Dewulf, head of the chair on epidemiology started the training with a lecture on the five main principles of biosecurity and practical examples to illustrate and respect these principles in order to prevent disease from entering the farm and spread within it. The principles being:

  1. Preventing direct and indirect contact between potentially infectious and susceptible animals
  2. Not every route of transmission is equally important, so not every biosecurity measure is equally effective
  3. Lower the general infection pressure on the farm to lower the burden on the immune system of the animals
  4. Size matters meaning that although biosecurity is important on every farm, on larger farms the risk and negative consequences of disease outbreaks will be much larger and harder to contain than on smaller farms.
  5. Frequency matters: the frequency of events or actions happening on the farm determine the risks. An event or action (e.g. feed truck delivering feed) with a low probability of infecting the farm per visit can pose a substantial risk for the farm when it reoccurs frequently.

Next, prof. Dewulf explained these principles and suitable external and internal biosecurity measures in more detail with practical examples for pig production.

Scoring and benchmarking biosecurity with Biocheck

The final theoretical part of the first day was focused on the UGhent’s Biocheck. This innovative risk-based scoring system can elevate the European livestock sectors’ biosecurity status since it is the first system to quantitatively score and benchmark the biosecurity of farms in pig, poultry, dairy, beef and veal production. The checklist evaluates the farm’s biosecurity measures and takes into account the relative risks of different infection transmission routes resulting in an overall biosecurity score out of a 100 for the farm as well as detailed scores for external and internal biosecurity separately. The highest detail of scoring offers farmers and vets immediate insight into measures to improve within both the domains of external and internal biosecurity.

In the afternoon, the theory on biosecurity in general and the use of the Biocheck was nicely illustrated with a visit to a farrowing farm of a thousand sows and being a text book example of managing biosecurity in pig production. Here participants got the chance to exercise in evaluating a farms’ biosecurity status by use of the Biocheck.

Day 2: Focus on poultry production

The second day of training was focused on biosecurity in poultry and especially broiler production. D r Nele Caekebeke focused first on specific biosecurity aspects in poultry production, after which the participants had to exercise in designing and improving biosecurity measures on specific broiler farms.

The poultry training was finalized with another field visit to an integrated broiler farm where the participants could practice the Biocheck scoring in broiler production.

Get in touch to find out more about biosecurity training

If you are interested in the Biocheck scoring system, or would like to participate in or organise similar training in scoring and improving biosecurity measures, please get in touch with Prof. Jeroen Dewulf.

DISARM meets the EIP Focus group on Reducing Antimicrobials in Poultry Farming to check out the innovative NestBorn on-farm hatching concept

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On the 15th January, we had the opportunity to join the agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP AGRI) focus group on Reducing the use of antimicrobials in poultry farming for their visit to the Experimental Poultry Research Centre of the Province of Antwerp in Flanders.

The EIP focus group is a gathering of various poultry experts from across Europe with various expertise from farming, veterinary, industry, research and policy backgrounds to discuss challenges and opportunities to stimulate the transition towards more prudent use of antibiotics in poultry farming. Their visit to the experimental center was organized alongside their second focus group meeting.

An afternoon symposium was organized for the group during which the DISARM network was promoted. The main topic of the symposium was focused on the revolutionary technique of on-farm hatching of broiler chicks. This innovative practice improves the health, development and welfare of the chicks since the stressful post-hatching period and processing in the hatchery is being cut out of the production process. The day-old chicks hatched on the farm can have direct access to feed and water and do not have to be transported from the hatchery to the broiler farm. The direct access to feed and water and reduced stress from handling the chicks and transport results in a better early life start with better gut development as well as potentially improved immune development.

Several commercial companies offer solutions for on-farm hatching already and were all briefly introduced during the symposium. The NestBorn concept was however the focus of the afternoon. This concept stands out to the other offered solutions because of its simplicity. The hatchery takes care of placing the 18-days incubated eggs into a thicker layer of bedding material in a pre-heated barn by means of a specially designed and                                                                                     automated egg placing machine.

Consequently, the hatching process is being monitored with ovoscan sensors measuring the egg shell temperature in real-time so that both farmer and hatchery have insight and control over the hatching process. As soon as the chicks start to hatch the system offers the benefits of the on-farm hatching.

The system is remarkably flexible since it requires no investment costs from the poultry farmer. This also makes it possible to switch back to stocking conventionally hatched day-old chicks. The only point of attention is to be able to squeeze the three additional days of hatching into the downtime between production cycles without hampering effective cleaning and disinfection and to closely monitor the climate of the broiler barn in the pre-hatching period. Extra heating cost for the hatching period should be recoverable with savings on medicine use and less problem solving later on in the production cycle. Data from the poultry veterinary practice DEGUDAP guiding the farmers that have adopted the NestBorn concept, showed reductions in the use of antibiotics of 50 to 62%. Moreover improvements in feed conversion of 2 to 4 points have been observed as well on commercial farms.

To conclude the symposium the testimony of the early adopter poultry farmer Gerard Witlox emphasized the practical benefits of the system and positive effect on his work, joy and satisfaction because of less troublesome production cycles with healthier and more vital chicks. He has been using on-farm hatching for 2 years now and he considers it as the most significant innovation in broiler production for the past 30 years.

The NestBorn system and the egg placing machine are patented and their use is only allowed under a licencing agreement with HFHC nv, the NestBorn company.

DISARM at Agribex

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On the 6th December 2019, we had the opportunity to promote the DISARM network at Agribex, one of the biggest agricultural fairs in Belgium in the #Welovelivestock show. We presented some promising results from the pig sector in which coaching in combination with farm specific action plans have proven to be effective in lowering the use of antibiotics without jeopardizing technical and economic performance of the farm. On the contrary, farrow-to-finish farms in the study on average improved both their technical performance and their net farm result.

DISARM’s International Webinar was a great success

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The event on Tuesday 3 December 2019 was a huge success. We thank our hosts – Copa-Cogeca, our guest speakers – Gemma van den Berg (ZLTO) and Tommy Van Limbergen (PeHeStat), and Bart Vergote – the farmer who featured in our testimonial video, for enhancing our presentations.
Thanks also to our panel members, Edgar Garcia Manzanilla (Teagasc), Jeroen Dewulf (Ghent University), David John (Animal Health Europe), and Joost Vandenbroucke (Belgian Consumer Association Test-Achats/Test-Aankoop) for the interesting discussion facilitated by Greet Riebbels.

We were pleased to welcome many guests both in Brussels, and through online viewing of the webinar.

If you missed it, here you can view the recording of the webinar event hosted on Tuesday 3 December 2019 and download a copy of the powerpoint slides.

Link to Webinar

DISARM stakeholder event all presentations

Event Report