Swiss study links farm type to antimicrobial use in cattle and pigs: full analysis

A comparative Swiss study is putting farm structure into the antimicrobial stewardship conversation. In Preventive Veterinary Medicine, researchers reported that dairy cattle on mixed farms had higher antimicrobial use than cattle on specialized dairy farms, while finisher pigs on mixed farms had lower use than pigs on specialized finisher farms. The headline is less about a single species than about how the broader production setting may influence treatment patterns. (boris-portal.unibe.ch)

That question matters in Switzerland because the country has built a relatively detailed surveillance framework around veterinary antibiotic use. The IS ABV reporting system captures antibiotic use by animal species, production type, farm unit, and veterinary practice, and anonymized data can be used for research. Those data sit within Switzerland’s broader Strategy on Antibiotic Resistance, or StAR, which the Federal Council has continued through a 2024-2027 One Health action plan focused on preserving antibiotic effectiveness across human, animal, and environmental health. (blv.admin.ch)

The new paper appears to build on earlier conference work presented in 2025 on Swiss finisher pigs. In that analysis, researchers using 2023 IS ABV data reported 3,403 prescriptions across 500 specialized finisher farms and 1,444 prescriptions across 500 mixed farms. At the population level, antimicrobial use was estimated at 1.00 defined daily doses per finisher pig per year on specialized finisher farms versus 0.40 on mixed farms. At the farm level, the median was 0.11 DDD per finisher pig per year on specialized farms and 0.00 on mixed farms, a statistically significant difference. The authors suggested that management practices and farmers’ attitudes toward antimicrobial use may differ by farm type. (esphm2025.org)

That pig finding fits with a broader Swiss trend toward tighter antimicrobial stewardship, although not every metric moves in the same direction. Swiss reporting indicates veterinary antibiotic sales in 2023 were 14% lower than in 2021 and 48% lower than in 2014. Separate Swiss pig research has also found progress in reducing overall use and especially highest-priority critically important antimicrobials, while noting that treatment incidence at farm level can still remain substantial and unevenly distributed across operations. (blv.admin.ch)

Direct outside commentary on this specific paper was limited in the available public sources, but related literature supports the idea that farm management is a meaningful driver of use. Research in pig production has shown that farms combining strong technical performance with low antimicrobial use tend to have fewer gastrointestinal and respiratory problems, while cattle studies have linked antimicrobial use patterns with welfare and biosecurity conditions. That doesn’t prove causation in the Swiss mixed-farm study, but it strengthens the authors’ interpretation that farm context, not just species, likely matters. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Why it matters: For veterinarians, the practical takeaway is that benchmarking antimicrobial use by species alone may miss important differences in how farms are organized and managed. A dairy herd on a mixed farm may face different traffic patterns, labor allocation, housing realities, and treatment thresholds than a herd on a specialized dairy unit. The same goes for finisher pigs. If those differences hold up in further analysis, stewardship programs may need more farm-type-specific baselines, risk assessments, and advisory approaches rather than assuming one benchmark fits all. (boris-portal.unibe.ch)

The study also has relevance beyond Switzerland. Many countries are expanding farm-level antimicrobial monitoring, but surveillance systems often struggle to connect prescribing data with the management conditions that shape disease risk and treatment decisions. The Swiss model, with species- and production-level reporting inside a national AMR strategy, offers a framework for asking more targeted questions about where use is concentrated and why. (blv.admin.ch)

What to watch: The next step is whether the authors or other groups can identify the specific drivers behind these opposite cattle and pig patterns, and whether regulators or industry benchmarking programs begin stratifying antimicrobial use by farm type, not just species or production stage. (boris-portal.unibe.ch)