Factors influencing the performance of voluntary farmer disease reporting in passive surveillance systems: A scoping review

Abstract

The impacts of exotic disease incursions on livestock industries can be mitigated by having robust surveillance systems in place that decrease the time between disease introduction and detection. An important component of this is having farmers routinely observe their animals for indications of clinical disease, recognise the existence of problems, and then decide to notify their veterinarian or animal health authorities. However, as highlighted by this literature review, farmers are believed to be underreporting clinical events due to factors such as (1) uncertainty around the clinical signs and situations that warrant reporting, (2) fear over the social and economic consequences from both positive and false positive reports, (3) negative beliefs regarding the efficacy and outcomes of response measures, (4) mistrust and dissatisfaction with animal health authorities, (5) absence of sufficiently attractive financial and non-financial incentives for submitting reports, and (6) poor awareness of the procedures involved with the submission, processing, and response to reports. There have been few formal studies evaluating the efficacy of different approaches to increasing farmer engagement with disease reporting. However, there is a recognised need for any proposed solutions to account for farmer knowledge and experience with assessing their own farm situation as well as the different identities, motivations, and beliefs that farmers have about their role in animal health surveillance systems. Empowering farmers to take a more active role in developing these solutions is likely to become even more important as animal health authorities increasingly look to establish public-private partnerships for biosecurity governance.

Keywords: Biosecurity; Disease reporting; Farmer behaviour; Infectious disease; Veterinary behaviour.