An interactive online IT tool to aim the environmental surveillance of veterinary antibiotics in agriculture and pasture lands

Abstract

The undermining of the therapeutic effectiveness of antibiotics by their widespread use is causing the emergence of antimicrobial resistance, which is a major threat for both animal and human health. Since most veterinary antibiotics employed in livestock production are excreted essentially unaltered, they have been identified as major contributors of environmental contamination. However, the efforts of monitoring antimicrobial effects are focused on humans and livestock, neglecting the environment. The European Union institutions recognized this gap in the appreciation of the issue, and adopted an approach that includes to prioritize environmental tracking and to build the tools to make it economically accessible. This abstract has three main targets. Firstly, to fill the gap applying the IT methodological approach (the soil vulnerability map to antibiotic contamination) developed by De La Torre et al. (2012). Secondly, to identify the main livestock species and scenarios (agriculture and pasture) to be prioritized in surveillance efforts. Finally, to implement the code of agriculture practices and the stocking rates of grazing animals based on high vulnerability areas for antibiotic contamination. To facilitate the implementation of this risk evaluation procedure, we developed an interactive tool that allows to obtain downloadable maps of soil vulnerability to contamination for several land use (agriculture and pasture) and livestock (cattle, pig and chicken) scenarios for any veterinary antibiotics. Additionally, the tool allows to obtain a plot of the mean vulnerability of each considered administrative unit. We implemented the European Union countries as an example, but the tool could be applied to individual countries or even regional or sub-national scales.