A research project, ENVIRE, has been granted to the Institute for Veterinary Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Institute for Animal and Environmental Hygiene. It comprises an international consortium of researchers from France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Tunisia. The project ran 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 ENVIRE project is to contribute to the reduction of antimicrobial resistance selection and its spread from chicken farms to the environment, ultimately affecting humans. In the School of Veterinary Medicine at Freie Universität Berlin, two institutes were involved in the project: the Institute of Animal and Environmental Hygiene and the Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The latter coordinated the entire research network and was therefore responsible for coordinating and managing the network. The two institutes received ca. 327,000 €.

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

The Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Biostatistics was responsible for developing the risk assessment model in collaboration with partners in France. The goal was to quantitatively assess the importance of individual and combined interventions in reducing the risk of human exposure to resistant bacteria originating from poultry production and entering the human food chain or environment. Data from the literature were also needed for the model. Therefore, a systematic search was conducted to compile all available information from the literature, as well as public data.

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