<<January 25, 2017>>
Dear Sir or Madam:
In 2017 the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will launch two studies on the use of antimicrobial drugs in animal agriculture, one surveying swine producers and the other surveying feedlot cattle producers. These surveys are one component of USDA’s national initiative to characterize antimicrobial use and stewardship on farms and to evaluate impacts to animal agriculture of changes in Federal regulations. We are hoping that you, as a swine producer, will agree to participate in this important study.
Data for the Swine 2017 Antimicrobial Use study will be collected in 13 States. Study objectives are:
To estimate the percent of operations with nursery or grower-finisher pigs that use antimicrobials in feed or water, by antimicrobial and by reason (growth promotion/production, disease prevention, disease treatment), for calendar year 2016.
To describe stewardship practices on U.S. swine farms.
To create a benchmark for evaluating changes in antimicrobial use and stewardship over time relative to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s January 1, 2017 implementation of the Veterinary Feed Directive restricting the use of medically important antimicrobials in feed and water in animal agriculture.
The enclosed information sheet describes the Swine 2017 Antimicrobial Use study in more detail.
Participating in the study is voluntary and involves completing a questionnaire. No biological samples will be collected. The questionnaire will take about one hour to complete. This study is being conducted under strong confidentiality laws that allow us to guarantee the protection of your individual responses. Your responses will be used only in combination with other responses to report regional and U.S. statistical estimates. In fact, data collectors and analysts are required by law to complete training on confidentiality and are subject to substantial penalties for disclosing individual data, including fines and/or jail time.
You will be contacted by telephone between xxxx and xxxx, 2017, to arrange a convenient time and place for you to complete the questionnaire. We’d like to thank you in advance for your participation, which is vital to the success of the 2017 Antimicrobial Use studies.
Sincerely,
Enclosure (1)
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Bjork, Kathe E - APHIS |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-22 |