Antibiotic resistance - Finnish mastitis expertise is a success story of cooperation
The Nordic countries, and Finland in particular, have been pioneers in responsible antibiotic treatment and systematic prevention of mastitis for decades. Now the genuine interest of the rest of the milk-producing world in this know-how is also awakening.
The European Union has made it a key objective to develop food production in a more sustainable direction. As the most significant action to achieve this target, the Commission has committed to halving the use of antibiotics in animal production by 2030 (compared to a 2018 baseline). The EU Regulation on veterinary medicinal products, which became applicable at the beginning of 2022, has been designed as a tool to deliver on this promise. Among other things, the regulation prohibits the prophylactic use of antibiotics in animals and obliges Member States to collect and report data on the use of antibiotics by animal species. It also stops the use of certain antibiotics in animals altogether.
In milk production, most antibiotics are used to treat mastitis. Therefore, changing antibiotic treatment practices for mastitis in a more sustainable and justified direction is key to achieving these goals.
A forerunner in addressing mastitis and combating antibiotic resistance
The Nordic countries have been pioneers in the responsible use of antibiotics for a long time. Finland has probably been the most advanced country in the sustainable treatment and prevention of mastitis. Researchers at the University of Helsinki have been pioneers already in the last millennium in drawing up a recommendation for the treatment of mastitis that is ahead of its time, and which, even in the light of more recent information, is scientifically justified. Responsible for the collective health of animals, the environment and humans, yet at least as effective in treating individual patients as previously used treatment practices that are questionable in terms of antimicrobial resistance, for example. This recommendation has also, probably more effectively than anywhere else, been put into practice on dairy farms. For its part, the Finnish dairy industry has enabled the implementation of the recommendation by offering domestic producers an inexpensive and functional analysis service for mastitis samples.
Vetcare is also an integral part of this Finnish success story. Vetcare was born out of the need to bring to market and develop medicinal products that comply with Finnish treatment recommendations. One of Vetcare's first product development projects has been the Carepen intramammary. The product had to be developed in-house, because there was no narrow-spectrum antibiotic product for the local treatment of mastitis that met the advanced Finnish treatment recommendations around the world. Subsequently, Vetcare has also been the first operator in Finland to introduce the PCR method into wider commercial use in mastitis diagnostics. That was 15 years ago. Since then, after the method has proven its benefits and usefulness in large-scale everyday use, the dairy industry has upgraded its analysis service to PCR-based. Today, Finland is an undisputed expert and pioneer in PCR-based mastitis diagnostics, whose experience and expertise are valued elsewhere.
Good management of the mastitis situation and the preparation of a farm-specific prevention strategy requires comprehensive knowledge of the mastitis-causing microbes present in cattle. Our excellent milk sample analytics and established good sampling practices from producers make this possible. This information should also be available to the veterinarian on the farm so that it can be used as a basis for drawing up plans to improve udder health and recommending measures. We are also ahead of the rest of the world in the management and processing of this information. Finnish animal health care systems collect and combine information from several sources and make it available to the treating veterinarian in a usable form. This kind of integration between several different information systems enabled by cooperation between different actors and the convenient usability of data in everyday work sounds like science fiction to a foreign colleague.
Finland's journey to becoming a model country for mastitis is, above all, a heroic story of cooperation. The researchers have had a vision that veterinarians, producers, the dairy and veterinary industries have supported through their own actions. Vetcare is proud to be part of this story.
Growing interest in our expertise on mastitis
Although the Nordic responsible mastitis and antibiotic policy may have been appreciated in the past as a curiosity, it has not been considered a realistic model to implement anywhere else. Now the situation is clearly changing. The new requirements enshrined in EU legislation for more sustainable use of antibiotics in animal production have attracted interest from other countries, including the international veterinary pharmaceutical industry, to more Nordic practices. This was revealed in August 2024 at the National Mastitis Council's Regional Meeting in Ghent. Vetcare attended the congress as a partner of Boehringer Ingelheim. Boehringer Ingelheim distributes Vetcare's narrow-spectrum intrammam formulation Carepen throughout much of Europe (where its local brand name is Ubropen).
Vetcare travelled to the congress with Professor Päivi Rajala-Schulzt . Päivi participated in the three-hour discussion panel 'The great mastitis debate' organised by Boehringer Ingelheim, which aimed to discuss mastitis-related practices open-mindedly and present new, even bold, views to the audience. Päivi was the only Nordic participant in the panel. In addition to our entourage, there was one Finn in the entire congress.
In discussions with colleagues it became clear that Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian mastitis specialists and researchers are often more interested in, for example, Nordic mastitis expert meetings than these global mastitis congresses. This is understandable, because our local practices and views on the treatment of mastitis have long been so significantly different from the mindset of the rest of the world.
Hopefully, however, Nordic experts will still be able to actively participate in the international discussion on mastitis, now that the Nordic view would at last, even after many discouraging years, have listeners further afield.
