From Morrison et al. (2024): "Johne’s disease is chronic, affecting the gastrointestinal tract of cattle and other ruminants and is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium avium ssp. Paratuberculosis. Many countries have introduced schemes and programmes to try and control the spread of Johne’s disease, including the UK. Despite efforts to control it, however, Johne’s disease remains consistently ranked by UK producers as the top ranked disease negatively affecting productivity, indicating that schemes are not perceived to have solved the problem fully. Building on a global systematic review of the literature on barriers and solutions for Johne’s disease control on-farm, we conducted an empirical study with over 400 farmers and 150 veterinarians across the UK. The study used workshops and semi-structured interviews to understand better the challenges dairy farmers and veterinarians face in implementing on-farm Johne’s disease management schemes with the aim of identifying solutions." The data record contains 15 farmer interview transcripts, 13 veterinarian interview transcripts, and notes from 22 workshops with farmers and veterinarians.Our multi-disciplinary project aims to make use of existing data sources and trial environmental sampling for risk assessments with the aim of enhancing Johne’s Disease control. Our specific questions are: 1. What factors explain the differences in the success of Johne’s control between herds? (WP1) 2. What are the major bottlenecks to farmer and veterinarian engagement in using disease test data and what are the solutions? (WP1) 3. Why are some veterinary practices markedly more successful in controlling the disease in their client base than other practices? (WP1) 4. What measures undertaken by farmers are most likely to be associated with successful control in infection? (WP1) 5. What risk factors identified in on-farm risk assessments are associated with the presence of infection? (WP2) 6. What level of confidence would environmental sampling give as a means of estimating the probability of infection or freedom from infection? (WP2)

From Morrison et al. (2024): The data collection for this study took place between October 2022 and April 2023 and was approved by an ethics committee at Cranfield University. It comprised of 22 workshops (mostly online) and 28 in-depth online interviews with both farmers and veterinary professionals from across the UK. Data for this paper were collected from across the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland). The 22 workshops were arranged in collaboration with vet practices, vet nutritionists, and dairy consultants from across the UK. 20 of these workshops were conducted online via zoom whilst two were in-person. The in-person workshops took place in the south-west of England and Leicester. The online workshops were attended by a range of farmers from different practices across England, Scotland, and Wales. Two of the online workshops were solely for farmers in Northern Ireland. Meetings began with a 1.5-hour pre-meet with veterinary professionals from up to four separate organisations, followed by a 1.5-hour interactive workshop with farmers and veterinary professionals (farmers were invited by their vet practice). An estimated total of 154 veterinary professionals attended across all pre-meets and 418 farmers associated with the respective vet practices attended the workshops. Attendance ranged from 7 to 49 farmers per workshop and 4 to 16 vets per workshop. It was challenging to gather exact numbers of attendees as individuals joined and left the workshops throughout, and in some cases, farmers did not have their cameras on so it was not possible to know how many people were joining from their location (each ‘off’ camera was counted as one person). Guaranteed anonymity in the workshops prevented the socio-economic makeup of participants being known. Both the pre-meet and workshops operated as focus groups for the research. Before the workshops, farmers and vet practices were asked to supply their JD data to the research team. This data was then processed by InterHerd+ (a JD tracker developed by Pan Livestock Services Ltd) which transformed the data into a JD tracker report for each farmer making it easier to see their JD tests results from previous years and other statistics such as their likelihood of culling a JD positive cow. These reports were shared with farmers ahead of the workshop and explained in the meeting. Industry experts facilitated the workshops and provided an update on JD developments, conducted interactive polls, and asked questions regarding engagement in JD control. Detailed notes were made during each workshop by different members of the research team, but it was not recorded to create a more informal meeting. These notes were then uploaded onto Nvivo (Version 13) (Lumivero, 2023), which facilitates qualitative analysis, and key themes were identified using an inductive approach. The data contributed to the establishment of key factors affecting Johne’s control with supporting quotes in the results taken from the in-depth interviews subsequently carried out with former workshop and other participants (since we did not have verbatim notes from the workshops). The interviews were carried out in parallel with the workshops and offered the opportunity to collect more in-depth qualitative data with some of the individuals who had participated (and some who had not). Three different semi-structured interview guides were used; one for farmers, one for the majority of veterinary professionals and a third for veterinary professionals who were directly involved in the development of processor JD requirements. We tried to include farmers who were both more engaged and disengaged on JD control. Several channels were used particularly to identify farmers who are disengaged in JD control for interview. Vet referrals and a review of the farmers’ JD data provided for the workshops helped to identify farmers who had high levels of JD in their herd and therefore were expected to be less engaged in JD control. These farmers were contacted for interview. A short Qualtrics screening survey was also created which asked farmers their opinions on JD control and whether they would be willing to be interviewed. The survey was sent out to vet practices, farming cooperatives, and other farming organisations who then disseminated it amongst their farmers. Farmers who were willing and were identified as being less engaged in JD control via the questionnaire, were contacted for interview. Veterinary professionals were identified through industry contacts. The 28 interviews (15 farmers and 13 veterinary professionals) lasted up to 36 minutes. The interviews all took place over zoom or via the phone and were either voice recorded and transcribed, or written notes were used. Written notes were made during each interview in case the voice recording was of poor quality. These written notes were analysed for two of the interviews due to participants being outside on the farm and in their car during the interviews resulting in poor audio recordings. These written notes were thematically analysed using Nvivo through a process of inductive interview coding.