Pilotage de la santé en élevage : comment les éleveurs maîtrisent-ils la santé de leurs animaux ?

International audienceMonitoring systems for animal health: How do farmers manage animal health? Many tools and procedures exist to manage animal health in different agricultural activities, but not all of them are found across sectors. UniFilAnim Santé is a multi-sector collaborative project (poultry, pigs and ruminants) which aims to provide farmers with the keys to improve their management of health using models from other sectors as sources of inspiration. First, a questionnaire was sent to experts in livestock production (veterinarians, technicians, dairy monitors, etc.) asking them to detail all the tools or procedures they use to manage animal health. The 179 responses were analyzed statistically to obtain a typology of the tools. Five groups were distinguished: mandatory, related to the creation of references, based on results of slaughterhouses and laboratory analysis, meetings to exchange practices, and implemented by farmers alone or with advisors. This typology was then tested during focus groups with farmers. They had to identify the tools they were using to manage the health of their animals and categorize them into one of the predefined groups. The focus groups identified a 6 th category for tools and methods not mentioned by the experts. The farmers use mainly sensory indicators on a daily basis: sight, smell and hearing. On the other hand, livestock advisors and veterinarians base their work on periodic monitoring, more often using assessment protocols, such as measuring instruments, or analyzing production data recorded by farmers during their visits. In fact, the distribution of roles and tools between farmers and experts opposes daily health management of livestock by farmers themselves, in favor of medium-term surveillance provided by experts. Each sector is distinguished by the partnership schemes that farmers build around monitoring farm health and by the type of contracts that bind them to economic operators