The Classyfarm System

The challenges facing the public health and agri-food sectors are becoming increasingly complex. There are increasingly interconnected risks of deficiencies in animal welfare and livestock biosecurity and excessive antimicrobial use, necessitating an integrated approach that also includes the slaughterhouse as a key epidemiological observatory.

These risks are not only related to zoonoses and food safety but also antimicrobial resistance, a severe human and veterinary health issue. Therefore, there is the urgent need for an efficient plan of action for prevention, control and risk reduction.

Over the last decade, the Directorate General of Animal Health and Veterinary Drugs (DGSA) of the Italian Ministry of Health (MINSAL) has been engaged in identifying key innovations to address all the complex issues outlined above. Successfully implementing these innovations will radically change the management of animal health and welfare in Italy. It is in this context that the ClassyFarm system was created for the purpose of classifying farms according to their risk to public veterinary health.

ClassyFarm was strongly advocated by the DGSA and officially recognised in Italy in 2017. The general management and further developments of the system were assigned to the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell’Emilia Romagna (IZSLER). In accordance with the Decree of the Minister of Health of 7 December 2017, Article 14 of Legislative Decree No 136 of 5 August 2022 (implementation of the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/429), and Article 9 of the Interministerial Decree of 2 August 2022 "Regulations on the National Quality System for Animal Welfare".

The system is the result of several projects financed by MINSAL and carried out by IZSLER with the collaboration of the University of Parma and numerous public stakeholders (national and local authorities, universities, etc.) and private stakeholders (veterinarians, farmers, associations, etc.).

ClassyFarm is an IT platform within the national veterinary portal (www.vetinfo.it), which processes a large amount of data from different sources (collected in the field or via other systems) using business intelligence processes. Specifically, data is collected on:

• Field surveys of animal welfare and farm biosecurity
• Antimicrobial use and resistance
• Hey herd data (health status, production and feed)
• Slaughterhouse assessments on animal health (e.g. lung scores) and welfare (e.g. tail lesions in pigs)

The information collected in the field may come from official controls carried out by the competent authorities, from audits by label certification bodies (under implementation) or from private veterinarians trained to complete specific surveys. The latter are carried out on a voluntary basis, as defined by the Decree of the Minister of Health of 7 December 2017.

Data flow in the ClassyFarm system. Input can come from different sources. Once the data has been processed, the output is made available to registered users through various interactive dashboards. In addition, PDF reports summarising data can be downloaded from some of these dashboards.

One of the key functions of ClassyFarm is its interoperability with other information systems such as the national veterinary registry (BDN), the Italian electronic veterinary prescription system and certain national diagnostic laboratories. ClassyFarm can analyse and compare a large amount of information from different sources to monitor:

• Animal welfare
• Farm biosecurity
• Antimicrobial use and resistance

This data collection and analysis has several objectives:

• Improve cooperation between farmer, veterinarian and the competent authorities in order to optimise the use of antimicrobials and animal welfare.
• Make available aggregated information at different geographical levels (national, regional, local) for the purpose of monitoring and comparing different territories.
• Facilitate the collection of data useful for possible voluntary labelling (e.g. SQNBA - National Quality System for Animal Welfare)
• Enable the efficient scheduling of official animal welfare, pharmacosurveillance and biosecurity controls for those farms with a higher risk rating; on this issue, the system has already been active for some years.

ClassyFarm can be accessed by authorised users and provides public and private stakeholders with a tool for identifying deficiencies on individual farms or in particular geographical areas, serving as a guide for potential improvements. It also fully complies with the Animal Health Law (Regulation (EU) 2016/429) the recent regulations on feed (Regulation (EU) 4/2019 amending Regulation (EC) 183/2005) and veterinary medicines (Regulation (EU) 2019/6).

ClassyFarm aims to strengthen disease prevention in animals, slow the spread of antimicrobial resistance and to make official controls more efficient. Furthermore, the system is a tool that can help farmers to improve their farms by striving for quality as far as possible. In this context, the farm veterinarian represents the link between the farmer and the competent authorities, supporting the farm’s strategic choices (management, welfare, biosecurity, etc.) also on the basis of the information made available by ClassyFarm.

Depending on the user profile, ClassyFarm can show aggregated information by geographical area and type of farming, encouraging a virtuous circle based on the emulation of best practices. This process should lead to healthier animal husbandry, with economic advantages for farmers and further guarantees for consumers.

The risk-based classification of farms, according to shared standards, allows the competent authorities to plan more effective and targeted controls, with significant benefits for public administration in terms of human and financial resources. In addition, the burden on farmers who operate in compliance with the regulations will be reduced, in terms of less frequent controls.

ClassyFarm is therefore a beneficial tool for farmers operating small and large business who join the system with the indispensable support of their veterinarian.

Last update 09/11/2023