Teagasc project aims to reduce antibiotic use in agriculture

A new Teagasc-funded project in collaboration with Animal Health Ireland is aimed at addressing the growing threat of antibiotic resistance by promoting behavioural change among farmers.

Antibiotic resistance is caused by the overuse or misuse of antibiotics in animal as well as human health and can be transferred between animals and people through the environment, direct contact and the food chain. This, in turn, can lead to the development of superbugs which render essential antibiotics ineffective, making some surgeries or cancer treatments too risky to perform.

“This requires everyone in society including vets, doctors, farmers, patients, and food consumers to change their behaviour so as to minimise the spread and development of antibiotic resistance by more responsible use of antibiotics and reducing the need for antibiotics in the first place,” says Alison Burrell, a chartered health psychologist working in Animal Health Ireland.

Ireland’s National Action Plan for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) sets out actions for all sectors including agriculture, she says. Along with ensuring responsible antimicrobial use, there is also a focus on changing the conditions so that less bacterial infections occur and the need for antimicrobials is reduced. Treating the cause rather than the problem involves prioritising numerous different behaviours in areas such as infection control, biosecurity, vaccination, nutrition, hygiene, farm health plans, diagnostics, optimal housing, transport management, and so on.

Achieving this change in behaviour is easier said than done, however. “Behaviour change is hard and it’s challenging for farmers to change the routine way they manage the health of their animals,” Burrell says. “The first step is for farmers to understand why they need to change their behaviour in the face of this threat.”

According to Burrell, evidence suggests interventions which combine restrictive and enabling measures such as education and training, restructuring the environment, communications and messaging, and incentives are more successful than restrictive, legislative measures alone. This is because restrictive measures may not be targeting those factors which are likely to bring about the motivation to change behaviour.

For example, new legislation may mean that an individual knows they have to change their behaviour, but they may not see the need or value to them personally of changing their behaviour. “There is always a bit of ambivalence in relation to behaviour change,” says Burrell. “People need to be motivated to make the change and it will be better if that motivation is intrinsic and not coming from someone else.”

Driver of change

One of the factors which has emerged as a significant driver of behaviour, and behaviour change, on farms is the farmer-vet relationship as farmers report vets as some of their main sources of information on good animal health practices and advice. At the same time, vets report challenges in effectively communicating to farmers about changes required on the farm.

This has led to the development of the new Animal Health Ireland and Teagasc project which is set to begin in September. It is a behaviour change intervention focused specifically on supporting effective communications between farmers, vets and farm advisers, who are also viewed as an important and trusted source of information.

The project involves training vets in motivational interviewing techniques. This is a collaborative communication approach developed by psychologists which draws on individuals’ inner motivation to change, rather than external pressures. It stresses the importance of providing people with the autonomy to explore their own reasoning for making changes in order to make more meaningful, sustainable changes to behaviour.

“It involves the use of open questions to get as much information as possible from the farmer,” Burrell explains. “By using affirmations, reflections and summaries, the aim is to create a collaborative relationship between vet and farmer, hopefully leading to shared decisions on animal health.”

Instead of the vet telling the farmer what to do, they jointly arrive at decisions which will achieve reductions in antibiotic use with no detrimental impact on animal health.

“The AMU-Farm project will start in September,” says Burrell. “We will begin by looking at our recruitment strategy and evaluation methodology and we’ll start training the first cohort of vets in 2022.”

Vets will receive extensive training in motivational interviewing while a cohort of farm advisers will receive training in behaviour change techniques such as action planning, goal setting, cognitive restructuring, and framing. These vets and farm advisers will then implement their training over two years with specially selected dairy and pig farms.

It is hoped this will improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance and influence motivations to reduce antibiotic use in the farming community.

“The initial project will run until 2025 and, if it is successful, we intend to continue beyond that,” Burrell says.