An overview of the national cattle health and welfare related information systems in Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Germany

Tuija Kallio¹Anri Timonen^1*Hardi Tamm²Anne Põder³Martin Kukk³Natascha Schlereth⁴Pia Ulvenblad⁵Per-Ola Ulvenblad⁵Elisa Tikkanen¹Pekka Kilpeläinen¹Henrik Barth⁵Getachew Abate Kassa⁴Ants-Hannes Viira³

• ¹Unit of Measurement Technology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland
• ²Estonian Dairy Cluster, Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia
• ³Chair of Economics in Rural Economy, Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia
• ⁴School of Management, Chair of Agricultural Production and Resource Economics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany
• ⁵School of Business, Innovation and Sustainability, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Halland, Sweden

The digitalization of cattle husbandry has increased the cattle health and welfare related data creation and collection to multiple information systems (IS). We described nationally widely used cattle health and welfare data containing ISs in Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Sweden by studying the ownership of them, as well as funding, developmental views, data access, data ownership, and data integration between other ISs. Additionally, we described the ISs with experts and stakeholders in interviews and living labs (LL). The number of statutory ISs was two in every study country and the number of non-statutory ISs was one in Estonia and Sweden, and four in Finland and Germany. The IS providers and data integration possibilities between the systems differed by study countries, while the type of collected data and the IS funding policies stayed similar. In LLs, congruent views about the importance of standardization of the collected data and the usability of that data for farm decision-making and improvement in management practices were mentioned as main challenges for future development. To gain full benefit from the collected data, data from automatic milking systems should be integrable with data collected to other ISs. In future, data integration should be improved for user-friendly approach of cattle health and welfare related ISs and utilization of the collected data for animal health and welfare improvement should be implemented within the cattle value chain to ensure the sustainability of the industry. Common will between public and private operators as well as cross-border multidisciplinary co-operation are required to fulfill these goals.