Roadmap for the development of control strategies for liver fluke

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

How can we improve the development and uptake of best practice management of liver fluke control?

What are the scientific and technological challenges (knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

• Farmers are often not aware of the cost of disease.
• Recommendations for control have changed over the recent past, so to whom should farmers listen?
  The benefits of integrating diagnostics and treatment have not been widely recognised or applied: few farmers use any diagnosis.
• Farmers are frequently confused by the range of products available and the active ingredients. Prescribing advice needs to be improved and knowledge exchange programmes are required to achieve this. The targets of these programmes vary between countries according to routes of anthelmintic sale.

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

• Establishing the motivational factors behind the decisions of farmers.
• Development and extension of decision support tools that can act alone, but can also be integrated into general farm or pasture management software, e.g. farm-level risk mapping.
• Development of liver fluke control decision support systems for cattle, sheep and goats.
• Demonstration trials showing the feasibility and beneficial outcomes of best-practice approaches.

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

• Long-term relationships with farming communities, allowing deep study of socio-psychological elements of decision-making.
• Cost-benefit analysis demonstrating the cost of disease and the economics of various treatment options.

Existing knowledge including successes and failures

Surveys exist of farmer knowledge, attitudes and practices in relation to liver fluke control, but more work needed to understand motivations in holistic socio-economic contexts.