Data analysis supports monitoring and surveillance of goat health and welfare in the Netherlands

Abstract

Monitoring and surveillance systems have an increasingly important role in contemporary society ensuring high levels of animal health and welfare, securing export positions, and protecting public health by ensuring animal health and product safety. In the Netherlands, a voluntary monitoring and surveillance system is in place since 2003 to provide a broad overview of livestock trends in addition to disease-specific surveillance systems, including insight into the occurrence and prevalence of new and emerging non-notifiable diseases and disorders. Being a major surveillance component of this monitoring and surveillance system for small ruminant health in the Netherlands, an annual data analysis on routine census data is performed to retrospectively monitor trends and developments regarding goat health and welfare. This paper aims to describe the process of the data analysis on goat farms in the Netherlands in 2020 and subsequent results are discussed. The data analysis provides key monitoring indicators such as animal and farm density, mortality, animal movements, and numbers and origin of imported small ruminants. Trends were analysed over a five-year, period and associations between herd characteristics and herd health are evaluated. Results showed that in 2020 the Dutch goat population consisted of 670,842 goats, distributed over 14,730 unique herds and increased by 2.3 % compared to 2019. Between 2016 and 2020, although probably underestimated, recorded mortality rates showed a decline on both small-scale and professional farms, with a strongest decrease on farms with herd sizes over more than 200 animals. Seventy-five percent of all professional farms registered animal introductions, in addition to 63 % of small-scale farms, including 2439 imported goats. Performing risks analyses requires demographic knowledge of the goat industry. During and after several disease outbreaks, such as bluetongue and Schmallenberg virus disease, the data analysis proved to function as a valuable tool, however, appeared just as important for recording outbreak-free data. Since its start in 2006, the concept of the data-analysis has continuously been improved, and will in the future be further developed, especially if more complete data sets become available. Subsequently, data analysis will increasingly support monitoring and surveillance of goat health and welfare.