A new research project ENVIRE has been granted to the Institute for Veterinary Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Institute for Animal and Environmental Hygiene. It consists of an international consortium of researchers in France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Tunisia. The project runs from 2022 to 2025 and is part of the European Transnational Programme “One Health interventions to prevent or reduce the development and transmission of antimicrobial resistance” (JPIAMR-ACTION). The respective national funding bodies fund the consortium.

The overall objective of the project ENVIRE is to contribute to the reduction of the selection and the spread of antimicrobial resistance in broiler chickens and from chicken farms to the environment, and ultimately to humans. In the Department of Veterinary Medicine at Freie Universität Berlin, two institutes are involved in the project: Institute of Animal and Environmental Hygiene and the Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The latter coordinates the entire research network and is therefore responsible for the coordination and management of the network. The two institutes receive ca. 327,000 €.

The objective of the work of the Institute of Animal and Environmental Hygiene is to evaluate the effect of E. coli vaccination of poultry flocks to combat the development and spread of resistant E. coli strains. The planned study will follow an experimental design that can be conducted in the Institute's animal facility. This study will be accompanied by a corresponding field study by the project partner in Lithuania.

The Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Biostatistics is responsible for the risk assessment model together with the partners in France. The goal is to quantitatively assess the importance of individual and combined interventions to reduce the risk of human exposure to resistant bacteria that originate from poultry production and reach humans through food or the environment. Data from the literature are also needed for the model. Therefore, another goal is to use a systematic search to compile all available information from the literature as well as all available public data.

Further information can be found here: www.envire-project.de