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This biosecurity policy brief has been compiled following engagement with industry stakeholders and crofters. The research team has held an online living lab meeting with a diverse group of stakeholders. In addition five in person workshops were held on Lewis and Harris with 35 participants. These meetings gathered reflections on the understanding of biosecurity, barriers to use and external disease risk to livestock, Scottish Government

Report following five workshops with Crofters on Lewis and Harris to further our understanding of sheep keepers’ attitudes to sheep scab and roundworm control. The workshops also explored participants understanding of the term ‘biosecurity,’ barriers to implementing ‘best practice’ biosecurity and the ‘best fit[1]’ for their situation., Scottish Government

Diagnosis and treatment options/strategies for helminth parasitic diseases are not standardized globally, or even across Europe, due to factors such as epidemiology, resources availability, socio-economics, and the lack of adequate information. Good communication of options can help to overcome some of these problems. In this sense, it is proposed to develop a mobile application (Abozeid et al., 2021) that allows the tailoring, and sharing, of knowledge (Abu-El-Noor et al., 2021; Kunkel et al., 2021) related to the various diagnoses and treatments in a format appropriate for all stakeholders (e.g. farmers, veterinarians, universities, researchers, laboratories, industries). The proposal aims to present the theoretical functionalities for the creation of a mobile application (Muashekele et al., 2021), the application should have a sequence of options that must be grounded in theoretical requirements. First of all, there is a necessity to have inputs standardized by the application (e.g. country/region, applicable legislation, animal typology, disease characteristics, symptoms) that should be entered into the application. The aim is to provide a range of tailored options to the end-user. Second, given the user's choices, the application can offer information and guidelines (including veterinarians available, laboratories, diagnosis, treatments, stores, among others). It is highlighted that the main gain may be the collection of information, whenever the user allows it. Finally, considering that most farmers use the language of their country, it is crucial to have the application in different European languages. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

To mitigate emerging anthelmintic resistance in cattle, sustainable worm control strategies should be adopted, such as the use of diagnostic methods to take informed treatment decisions. To understand the factors affecting European farmers’ intention to adopt diagnostic methods and to gauge for differences between European regions, a theoretical framework, based on theories in the field of behavioural psychology and health psychology, was validated through a questionnaire survey, carried out in dairy farms in 6 European countries. Despite insufficient data from 2 countries and several confounders prohibiting statistical comparisons between countries, three models were developed, which allowed to describe general trends and differences between regions. Data from Northern-(Norway) and Central-Europe (Austria and Germany) resulted in two similar models, which differed in 3 questions. Southern Europe’s (Italy) data were more difficult to align with the conceptual model and several factors were deleted to fit the model. In all models, subjective norms, affected by a bandwagon bias, had the largest influence on farmers’ adoption intention. Perception of anthelmintic resistance had no effect on adoption intention for Northern and Central, but to some extent for Southern Europe. In Northern and Central Europe, attitude towards anthelmintics had a negative effect on adoption intention, while attitude towards diagnostics had a positive effect. Both types of attitudes were affected by the default bias. Finally, by combining self-reported practices for Northern and Central Europe, a larger effect of descriptive norms on farmers’ actual adoption of diagnostics was observed, compared to adoption intention and the default bias. COST EU info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

International audience; Climate change presents major challenges for European agriculture, and the speed, nature and extent of the responses to such challenges will have far-reaching social, economic and environmental consequences. Agricultural modelling has an important role in helping decision makers better understand the costs and benefits of different adaptation strategies, as well as trade-offs and win-wins between those strategies, mitigation measures and other economic, social and environmental goals. Incorporating adaptation strategies into biophysical, bio-economic and economic model is essential to gaining a more holistic understanding of their impacts, beyond the context of specific changes and purposes. Here, the ability and potential of agricultural models to characterise different adaptation strategies was explored, using the expertise represented within the Modelling European Agriculture with Climate Change for Food Security (MACSUR) project. In two workshops, modellers identified adaptation strategies, modelling challenges and knowledge gaps. A survey was conducted to understand current modelling capacity. Challenges centred on knowledge gaps, data availability, technical issues, and stakeholder interaction (e.g. communication with, relevance for). For operational and tactical strategies (changes in practice in response to daily, monthly, or seasonal variation in conditions) most challenges were technical, relating to limitations in the processes and mechanisms represented in models. For longer term strategic climate change adaptation, uncertainty about future socio-economic context (e.g. prices and regulation) and the impact of new adaptation options (e.g. appearance of new technologies) were highlighted. Progressively novel and far-reaching strategies increasingly challenge the scope of existing models. Whilst models vary in capacity, most modellers reported a potential to better characterise adaptation. However, costs (e.g. trade-offs with processing speed) and the fact that adaptation lies beyond the initial remit of many models mean that strategic prioritisation of adaptation as a focus for modelling is key to facilitating model development to support effective stakeholder choices.

Datasets from Germany and the United Kingdom containing information on geographic (European Union 27 countries), climatic, meteorological, host and infectious agents’ parameters (figure 2) have been completed and are now available for preliminary analysis relating to data quality and consistency. Data set information will continue to be added over the next 12 months.