Cornell researchers are developing a way to track antimicrobial use in livestock and pets while protecting farmers’ and veterinarians’ private information, backed by a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the Food and Drug Administration.
The project aims to close gaps in how antibiotic use is measured and shared, giving animal caretakers better information for treatment decisions and helping researchers understand antibiotic resistance, according to a Nov. 11 report by Krishna Ramanujan in the Cornell Chronicle.
Building trust while protecting private records
The effort is led by Dr. Renata Ivanek, a professor of population medicine and diagnostic sciences in Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Researchers plan to bring together antimicrobial-use statistics from dairy farms, poultry operations and companion animal veterinary practices, with beef and swine producers ultimately included as well.
Collecting those records presents both technical and human challenges. Existing information is fragmented, measurements differ across sectors, and farmers and veterinarians may be reluctant to share details about treatment decisions.
“We cannot manage how antimicrobials are used in animals unless we can measure, and we cannot measure because data are fragmented, siloed and unstandardized and there are no incentives for data sharing, and so there are these big hurdles about trust,” Ivanek told the Chronicle.
Some participants worry that peers, regulators, consumers or clients could interpret their records as evidence of too much or too little antibiotic use without understanding why an animal was treated — or why treatment was withheld.
The researchers propose a system that would aggregate information where the underlying records are held, then send the combined statistics to a secure repository. The approach is intended to keep individual information private while making broader patterns available for analysis.
A planned dashboard could provide national and local averages. Approved users could compare their own antimicrobial use with those benchmarks, potentially gaining information to guide treatment decisions or identify questions that need further research.
Moving beyond sales totals
Pharmaceutical companies’ sales figures, reported by tonnage, are currently the main source of antimicrobial-use data because more detailed records have been difficult to obtain, according to Cornell. Those totals offer an imprecise measure of how and why the medicines are used.
Other approaches also leave gaps. Use may be recorded in milligrams, doses or veterinary treatment visits, with each measure capturing only part of the picture. The project will explore a common metric that could work across different animal-care sectors.
Its goals also include governance shaped by the people contributing data, alongside technology designed to protect their privacy. Researchers hope that offering useful information in return will give farmers and veterinarians a reason to participate.
Understanding antibiotic resistance
Bacteria can acquire antibiotic resistance through genetic mutations or by exchanging genes. Antibiotic treatment can kill susceptible bacteria while allowing resistant bacteria to survive and multiply.
Resistant bacteria can affect people, livestock and companion animals. They can also reach people through food, animal contact and the environment. Antibiotic use in people contributes to resistance as well, Cornell’s report notes.
One aim of the grant is to help distinguish how much antibiotic use in animals may influence the development of resistant bacteria in animals and humans. The repository and dashboard are proposed tools; the source does not report that they are already operating or that the project has demonstrated a reduction in resistance.
Co-principal investigators include Cornell veterinary faculty Dr. Daryl Nydam and Dr. Casey Cazer; Steven Wolf, Kurt Waldman and danah boyd from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and Daniel Susser, Hakim Weatherspoon, Christopher De Sa, Immanuel Trummer and Jennifer Sun from Cornell Bowers Computing and Information Science. Dr. Randall Singer of Mindwalk Consulting Group and Dr. Jennifer Granick of the University of Minnesota are also co-principal investigators.
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