A UK practitioner's review of first European Mastitis Panel

The first European Mastitis Panel meeting took place in The Netherlands recently and was attended by 14 experts from seven countries.  The event, which will now take place annually, was facilitated by Jantijn Swinkels, technical manager at Intervet/Schering Plough Animal Health, in close co-operation with Theo Lam of the Dutch Udder Health Centre.  Vet Review farm animal consultant vet, Andrew Biggs, also attended and here is his take on what was discussed.

The European Mastitis Panel (EMP) was organised to assist those in academia or practice and with a special interest in mastitis to share information, new ideas and experiences.  It was a combination of practical and classroom sessions, with a farm tour of a unit with the very latest AMS installed.  Clearly, over two days, much was   discussed so, for the purpose of this review, I intend to focus on two of the talks both of which examine the perennially troubling area of how to get farmers to do what you tell them!

Theo Lam tackled this first, with a talk about the five year programme being run by the Dutch Udder Centre.  A significant element of this group’s work is based on a study done with 400 dairy herds into what makes the managers/owners tick.  The key findings were:

The three most important areas are manager/owner knowledge, attitude, behaviour and that:

-          Producers don’t want complicated management

-          Mastitis is no ‘coincidence’; it is a factor of the farm, but that can be difficult to accept

-          Management is mainly improved when farmers feel they have a problem

-          Dairy magazines and practitioner are the most important source of information

-          Private practitioner is first contact person in case of udder health problems

The Dutch Udder Health Centre has a vision:

“Better udder health leads to less economic losses and more satisfaction for producers and dairy industry and is good for animal welfare.”

The five year programme strives to join up the industry, farmers and practitioners with an overall objective of changing behaviour, and so, mastitis.  Research will only be implemented if it is made available, easily reachable, attractive, seen to be profitable and is from a believable source.

You could be forgiven for saying that not much of this is new.  Fair enough, but can we all sit back and say that our clients manage mastitis exactly as we would want them to?  Probably not.  The role of the decision-maker on the farm is key, and vets need to think carefully and cleverly about how we influence and guide them.

As in the UK, vets in The Netherlands have found that the number of dairy clients is falling and the challenges of the dairy producer:vet partnership continue to evolve.  The vet is now more and more acting as a consultant and in order to ensure the effective implementation of plans or protocols, motivation, education and an awareness of the commercial reason behind doing it are essential for farmers. 

It Pays To Reduce Mastitis was a theme of the session:

It = infectious pressure, Pays = planning and control, To = treatment, Reduce = resistance and Mastitis = milking routine and the milking machine.

The group reports that the most effective way of motivating farmers to understand, appreciate and implement veterinary advice has been through a series of on-farm satellite meetings that deal with hygiene, data handling, treatment, feeding and the transition cow and the milking process.  This is not dissimilar to many of the DEFRA funded Cattle Health Initiative meetings that many of us are doing in the UK. Approached in the way, and with cell count measuring, it is possible to see that farms in the sample group saw a more significant fall in cell counts than those outside the study (see graph).

Clearly, in order to appreciate what is being said, and to act upon it, farmers must assimilate the information themselves, gain a position of understanding and then act upon it.  And it is us, the practitioner, who determines how well they do this.

Anticipating the knowledge deficit among our clients could be a mistake.  Thinking we know what they do and don’t understand could be part of the problem.  This presentation made a clear and well laid out argument for informing and equipping managers and owners to make the decision.  However, it also said that this decision must be made in partnership with the vet, and ideally as a result of a discussion.  Taking the client with you through the decision-making process re-enforces their understanding and also ‘ownership’ of that decision.  Do that and, according to Theo Lam, you stand a better chance of success.

Continuing on the theme of client communication, Reint Jan Renes of Wageningen University gave a talk that aimed to look beyond the medical and technical elements of mastitis.  Again, this talk made the case for leaving behind the familiar ‘empty vessel’ model (one where the expert (vet) assumes the client has no knowledge).  No longer should it be the ‘we talk, you listen’ approach, he said.  The way forward is to implement a ‘we both talk and we both listen’ strategy.

This session highlighted findings from two in-depth studies that showed there is a missing link between intentions and actions.  Although vets and farmers have the intention of promoting good udder health, unless this is changed into daily practice, implementation will be poor.  But, as ever, changing behaviour is difficult.  As with the previous talk, much responsibility must come down to the individual, with this speaker going as far as to say that the individual is the weakest link.

Perhaps not the easiest thing to say to a client, much of the time it will be the case though.  A brief review of how people make decisions proved interesting:

Studies have shown that most farmers, even those classified as ‘hard to reach’ believe mastitis is a serious problem.  However, a major stumbling block is that, while they can describe mastitis, cell counts, treatments etc, they are very poor at self-reporting what actually happens.  In other words, they are able to talk theory, but not reality.  This isn’t because of an intention not to, but simply that much of the time it is human nature not to record everything, and to assume ‘it’ll be fine, I’ll remember’.  Also the quality of what is done needs to be checked.  The weakest link in dentistry is not the toothbrush or toothpaste, but the person brushing their teeth particularly if they do it faithfully but incorrectly!

This talk concluded by stressing to delegate that if we deal with the facts (the real recorded ones, not simply what we are told) and integrate the producer into the decision-making process, there is more of a chance of successful implementation.  Take it to the final stage, and provide the client with a to-do list that deals explicitly with what they need to change and how, and some of what we have been saying for all these years, may now actually be done!