Organic livestock farming contentious inputs in France: preliminary results

An on-line questionnaire (6 sections, 36 questions) about contentious inputs in organic livestock farming has been developed in English and translated to French based on the Brislin’s model. A sample of French organic farmers was contacted via e-mail up to 3 times and through 3 farmers’ associations from November 2018 to February 2019. A total of 135 out of 155 questionnaires were usable for the analysis. The men to women ratio were 60/40, primarily from 31 to 50 years old (83/135). In general, the questionnaire was fulfilled by the farm manager (111/135) and most participating farms (90.23%) were small (≤3 employees). In most cases, organic farms reared one (63.70%) or two (22.22%) animal species, mainly beef cattle (38.52%), dairy cattle (27.41%) and sheep (18.52%). In the last year, 48/130 farmers did not treat their animals. When they had to apply a treatment, the use of alternative therapies depended on the health issue they were facing. Between 15.38% (skin problems) and 34.55% (lameness) of the farmers still relied on conventional treatments instead of phytotherapy, homeopathy or probiotics; and between 6.45% (reproductive issues) and 35.29% (mastitis) reported the use of those alternatives as well as conventional treatments. Information about the use of those alternatives was mainly obtained through other farmers (66.42%) and veterinarians (46.27%). Voluntary vaccination of the animals was applied by 30/135 of the farmers. Half of the farmers added vitamins to the animals’ diet but 22.39% of them were not aware of the origin of the vitamins. This preliminary analysis suggests the need of further research on alternatives to the use of antibiotics and antiparasitics in organic livestock farming, and underlines that farmers are a key factor for the dissemination/implementation of the results. This project has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No [774340 – Organic-PLUS].