Environmental and Economic Impacts of Improved Antibiotics Stewardship in Poultry Systems

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To address AMR, there is consensus on the need to reduce antimicrobial use (AMU) in food animal production. Intensive poultry production is characterised by high AMU and associated environmental risks to human health through direct and indirect (environmental) transmission - e.g. from livestock waste. As in other LMIC countries there are emerging challenges in designing regulatory structures and priorities based on robust evidence of effectiveness and cost of different voluntary and mandatory interventions across different parts of the supply chain. This proposal offers five linked interdisciplinary work packages exploring different elements related to drivers of AMU, pathways to resistance, and economic costs of alternative mitigation measures and their effectiveness in terms of reducing AMR risks. The project adopts novel perspectives in terms of the development of antimicrobial stewardship across all industry actors (e.g. breeders, feeding, pharmaceutical, veterinarians, farmers, retailers). We also use a theoretical framework (a marginal abatement cost curve) to represent relative cost-effectiveness of mitigation measures. Further project elements will share experience on research and training methods and science-policy translation between countries. Activities: WP1 Supply/value chain characterisation: To define stewardship in terms of supply chain relationships and to model value chains in economic terms, development of farm scale economic models to test costs of interventions. Identification of different mitigation measures to reduce AMU, modelling propensity to adopt alternative AMU practices. WP2 AMR prevalence of AMR in target farms/systems: In selected groups of farms to identify /confirm AMR hotspots prevalence and pathways in farms & supply chains using bacteriological and metagenomic approaches to evaluate the consequences and relationship between AMR and different productive performances, considering resource consumption and residue generation, with the aim to model and characterise each group regarding its environmental impact (GHG emissions, pollution risk to in soil and water, and potential consequences). WP3 Characterising AMU reduction interventions: Evaluating the effectiveness of alternative mitigation measures identified in WP1. WP4 Cost-benefit analysis and scenarios: Development of a marginal abatement cost curve showing relative cost-effectiveness of alternative interventions targeting AMU. WP5 Decision support for industry policy, scenarios & integration: Developing industry support tool and supply chain guidance on AM stewardship plan across poultry industry stakeholders for promotion of adoption of CE measures. Evaluating potential regulatory interventions targeting AMU. The project seeks to understand and co-design cost-effective interventions across all supply chain actors that have a role on the stewardship of AMs, and can potentially influence on-farm behaviours, directly or indirectly. There is a need to understand how the action of the different actors might be combined to reduce AM use in production. The project will develop economic and behavioural methodologies as a basis for informing Argentinian field studies that seek to understand AMU drivers. It will test various responses (behavioural interventions), and evaluate the pathways to impacts; i.e. how these interventions and reduced use might actually reduce AMR, and what the broader economic costs and benefits of such scenarios might be. Much of the project will involve raising awareness of the role of economics among scientists, industry, regulators, and other policy makers, with a series of research, and policy meetings and joint events in both countries. It will also develop a consistent framework for representing the costs and benefits of measures to modify antimicrobial use in agriculture. This in turn will offer lessons for the development of LMIC strategies for managing antimicrobial use in poultry production.