Agreement of Benchmarking High Antimicrobial Usage Farms Based on Either Animal Treatment Index or Number of National Defined Daily Doses

Introduction: While treatment frequency as an indicator of antimicrobial consumption is often assessed using defined doses, it can also be calculated directly as an Animal Treatment Index (ATI). In this study, the correlation of calculating antimicrobial usage on Swiss pig farms using either national Defined Daily Doses (DDDch) or an ATI (number of treatments per animal per year) and the agreement between the different methods for the identification of high usage farms were investigated.Material and Methods: The antimicrobial consumption of 893 Swiss pig herds was calculated separately for suckling piglets, weaned piglets, fattening pigs, lactating and gestating sows using the indicators nDDDch (number of DDDch) per animal per year and ATI. Correlations between the indicators were investigated by calculating Spearman's Rho coefficients. The 5, 10, and 25% highest usage farms were determined by applying both methods and the interrater reliability was described using Cohen's Kappa coefficients and visualized by Bland-Altman plots.Results: The Spearman's Rho coefficients showed strong correlations (r > 0.5) between nDDDch/animal/year and ATI. The lowest coefficient was shown for the correlation of both indicators in gestating sows (r = 0.657) and the highest in weaned piglets (r = 0.910). Kappa coefficients identifying high usage farms were the highest in weaned piglets (k = 0.71, 0.85, and 0.91, respectively for 5, 10, and 25% most frequent users) and the lowest in gestating sows (k = 0.54, 0.58, and 0.55 for 5, 10, and 25% most frequent users).Conclusions: In general, the investigated indicators showed strong correlations and a broad agreement in terms of the calculated levels of antimicrobial usage and the identification of high usage farms. Nevertheless, a certain proportion of the farms were defined differently depending on the indicator used. These differences varied by age category and were larger in all age categories except weaned piglets when a higher percentage benchmark was used to define high usage farms. These aspects should be considered when designing scientific studies or monitoring systems and considering which indicator to use.