We have established an online community of practice which actors from the livestock industry, researchers and policy makers can join to meet each other and discuss and exchange knowledge and experience. All discussions take place in the framework of 10 specific topics that relate to disease prevention, biosecurity, optimal housing and animal management and alternatives for and prudent use of antibiotics.
A freely accessible database has been established as a repository for all relevant information on innovations, strategies and best practices. This database provides concise farmer friendly summaries with links to the original source of information. In total the database includes 340 research papers and research reports, 46 farm innovations, 82 tools and checklists and 43 industry innovations. Reviewing the material collected in the DISARM project showed a huge variety of publications, which was summarized in a State of the art Report.
To promote the team collaboration in multi-actor farm health teams we have engaged with 42 farms to work as a team on a SMART defined farm action plan that needs to result in improvements of overall performance, better animal health in general, better biosecurity and disease prevention and as a consequence reduce the need for antibiotics. These pilot farms acted as showcases to promote this approach to the wider industry. A farm health team toolbox was also developed to assist easy adoption, also after the end of this project. Furthermore we promoted and explained this approach to other animal health professionals in specific workshops. At the end of the project, the consortium also produced 30 factsheets describing setting of the farms, how the multi actor teams worked together to solve issues (challenges and strategies), the evolution of the biosecurity standards over the course of the observation and the farmers perception of the economic performance of the farm in connection with reduction of antibiotic use.
Since DISARM was a networking project aimed at widespread dissemination a lot of our effort focused on communication and dissemination. This way we have organized general communication to announce our project and expose it the to the wider EU community through press releases, two promotional videos and 2 EU stakeholder events and presence on various social media channels. The projects’ website has been populated with resources since its launch: factsheets, newsletters, practice abstracts, practice video’s, monthly summaries of the CoP reports and public deliverables since its’ launch. The YoutubeChannel has now 134 videos uploaded and 125 subscribers (
https://www.youtube.com/c/DISARMProject(öffnet in neuem Fenster)). A total of 104 practice abstracts have been prepared and corresponding 95 practice videos have been released in our media platforms and 11 project newsletters have been published up to June 2022. A total of 78 self-organised events and workshops organized in 9 partner countries of the DISARM network and one non-EU member state. Also DISARM participated in 97 events in 18 EU member states and 5 non-EU member states. Finally, the DISARM consortium also produced a total of 3 research prioritization reports and one policy brief.
