Australia's animal sectors now have a comprehensive framework to help strengthen the industry's response to antimicrobial resistance.
The Animal Antimicrobial Stewardship Framework helps animal sectors improve and verify day-to-day stewardship practices.
It has been co-designed by veterinarians and animal managers out of a study led by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency.
Antimicrobial resistance is a growing threat to human and animal health. When antimicrobials stop working, previously treatable diseases become difficult or impossible to manage, leading to increased illness, deaths and wider impacts on health systems and food production.
While many stewardship tools exist in human medicine, animal sectors have until now lacked a practical, scalable way to document, assess, verify and improve antimicrobial stewardship in real-world settings.
The framework identifies 47 essential and desirable stewardship practices across 18 focus areas, including leadership, training, diagnostics, responsible prescribing, record keeping and surveillance.
Lead author, Dr Kylie Hewson from CSIRO, said the project was grounded in lived experience to ensure the tool is practical and widely adoptable.
"Antimicrobial stewardship only works if the people responsible for using and overseeing antimicrobials can see exactly how it applies in their context.
"By co-designing this framework with animal health partners, we created something that is not only evidence based, but genuinely usable in the real world," Dr Hewson said.
The framework was piloted across multiple sectors, with participants using it to benchmark current practices and identify areas for improvement.
Study participants have already begun integrating the framework into routine operations and are preparing to adapt it for action at the sector level.
Pork industry participants said the framework itself challenged them to consider and deliver actions that prioritise, implement and demonstrate stewardship outcomes.
"It provides a solid foundation for pork industry stakeholders to adapt and adopt, and in doing so to formalise their stewardship credentials in a robust, repeatable manner," the pork industry participants said.
Dr Hewson said the framework creates new opportunities for industry and government.
"This gives industry a roadmap for setting meaningful goals and gives policymakers a way to understand what is happening at the enterprise level.
"Ultimately, it supports better animal health, better welfare and a stronger, more coordinated national approach to antimicrobial stewardship," Dr Hewson said.
The framework, is now available to download and use for veterinarians, producers, industry bodies and others working in animal sectors.
The research was supported by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and Australian Pork Limited.
