酪農地域の生産情報の統合と生産情報を用いた疫学研究のススメ

Abstract

A dairy farm owns much production data that are governed by some different cooperative societies. When we use those production data to study, we have to collect the data from some societies, integrate them using ID number of cattle or farm name, and use to analyze the association between a factor of research interest and production problems. Environment of dairy cattle in Japanese farms becomes diverse depending on the climate characteristics, self-sufficiency ratio for forage, land area for grass production, and so on. Most disorders in dairy cattle are known as environmental multifactorial problem. If a lot of risk factors for disorders are accumulated, as a result of that, some cattle become subclinical or clinical diseases. Therefore, to investigate an association with a problem in farms, we have to consider a number of factors in wide area and should select observational studies of epidemiology to large database. Now only a few scientists try to study about the field problems using production data in Japan. The reason for the number of the scientists has some possible causes, for example 1) no uniform management system for production data, 2) the cumbersome procedure to collect the production data, and 3) a few educational curriculum or training class to handle the production data. We have to think strategically into the future that we will unify all Japanese production data and make a system how to use the data for maintaining and improving Japanese livestock agriculture. Nobody doubts that Japanese production data is a repository of useful information. Shall we start epidemiological study using production data in Japanese dairy farms?