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Routine inertia and reactionary response in animal health best practice

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Abstract

Animal health is a key factor affecting the economic efficiency of the dairy industry. Improvements in animal health are also of relevance to society more broadly, given important implications for animal welfare, food safety and quality. Although the economic gains of best practice with regard to animal health have been well documented, many farmers are not adopting optimal herd management techniques. This paper utilises nationally representative farm-level data from Ireland for 2013 to identify drivers and barriers to the adoption of best practice with regard to on-farm mastitis management. Exploratory factor analysis is used to derive measures of farmers’ attitudes towards animal health and mastitis and econometric techniques are employed to empirically assess the influence of these on the uptake of beneficial herd health management practices. A number of focus groups were also undertaken to complement the analysis. This paper concludes that farmers’ attitudes towards animal health are not a key driver in the uptake of best practice, although perceived disease risk is of relevance. A number of interesting issues arise in identifying barriers to the uptake of best practice, these include the possibility of routine inertia, i.e., farmers do not deviate from the routine developed around mastitis prevention until there is an indication of infection, as well as constraints around the availability of labour and time. Farmer behaviour with respect to mastitis management can thus be considered as reactionary as opposed to precautionary. This research highlights the valuable role of the extension agent but concludes that engagement around knowledge transfer and technology adoption is particularly complex.

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Notes

  1. Somatic cell count is the number of cells present in milk (body cells as distinguished from invading bacterial cells) and is used as one indicator of udder infection. Somatic cells are made up of a combination of white blood cells and epithelial cells. White blood cells enter milk in response to inflammation, which may occur due to disease, or occasionally to injury. Epithelial cells are shed from the lining of the udder tissue. White blood cells make up the majority of the somatic cells, especially when the cell count is raised (Blowey and Edmondson 2010). Sub-clinical cases occur when the cell count level is elevated although the cow is not showing any clinical signs of the disease. As any indicator, it should be acknowledged that is not a perfect measure of milk quality, i.e., bulk tank readings can be influenced by factors such as the exclusion of milk from cows with high SCC or stage of lactation etc.

  2. Data on over 1000 farms representing a farm population of over 105,000 farms were collected up to 2012 when sampling changes were made, i.e., in 2012 data were collected on 922 farms representing a farming population of 79,292. The 2010 census of agriculture as conducted by the Central Statistics Office recorder the population of farms at 139,829. As pigs, poultry and farms with a standard output of less than €8000 are excluded within the NFS, 79,292 were represented in 2012.

  3. Further information on the CellCheck programme can be found at: http://www.animalhealthireland.ie/page.php?id=29.

  4. Extension contact is defined by the Teagasc National Farm Survey as farm contact with the Teagasc advisory service. Teagasc is the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority.

  5. A set of count data (Poisson) models was also estimated for herd management and hygiene practices respectively. Although little difference was found in terms of key findings and conclusions across the model specifications the logit models were preferred on the basis of superior goodness of fit, though the Poisson models provide additional evidence for the robustness of our findings. The results from these Poisson models are available from the authors on request.

  6. Results from the model are contained in Appendix 2 Table 8.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the funding received from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Research Stimulus Fund and are grateful to the staff of the Teagasc National Farm Survey for the provision of data and to colleagues for helpful advice received. Valuable comments received from the anonymous referees are also acknowledged with thanks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agricultural Economics and Farm Surveys Department, Rural Economy and Development Programme, Teagasc, Athenry, Co. Galway, Ireland

    Emma Jane Dillon

  2. Department of Food Business and Development, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Thia Hennessy

  3. Environment Department, University of York, York, UK

    Peter Howley

  4. Department of Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    John Cullinan

  5. Business Planning and Performance Evaluation Department, Teagasc, Athenry, Co. Galway, Ireland

    Kevin Heanue

  6. Agrifood Business and Spatial Analysis Department, Rural Economy and Development Programme, Teagasc, Athenry, Co Galway, Ireland

    Anthony Cawley

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  1. Emma Jane Dillon
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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Tables 6 and 7.

Table 6 Animal health attitudinal statements
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Table 7 Mastitis health attitudinal statements
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Appendix 2

See Table 8.

Table 8 Hygiene management regression results
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Dillon, E.J., Hennessy, T., Howley, P. et al. Routine inertia and reactionary response in animal health best practice. Agric Hum Values 35, 207–221 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-017-9817-5

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