Cohort profile: The FarmMERGE project—Merging human and animal databases to investigate the relationship between farmer and livestock health and welfare. The HUNT Study

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301045
• Publication Date: 2024-03-28T18:08:41Z
• Authors: Magnhild Oust Torske; Natalie Steen; Jonil Tau Ursin; Steinar Krokstad; Håvard Nørstebø; Karianne Muri
• Keywords: Animal health; Beef Cattle

Stockmanship is an important determinant for good animal welfare and health. The goal of the FarmMERGE project to investigate associations between farmer health work environment, health, productivity their livestock. We merged several livestock industry databases with a major total population-based study in Norway (The Trøndelag Health Study 2017–2019 (HUNT4)). This paper describes project’s collection merging data, cohort farmers farms that were identified as result our registry merge. There 56,042 participants HUNT4 (Nord-Trøndelag County only, participation rate: 54.0%). list whose self-reported main occupation was “farmer” (n = 2,407) agricultural containing production data from sheep, swine, dairy beef cattle 2017–2020. Central Coordinating Register Legal Entities used intermediary step achieve link farming enterprise data. 816 (89.5% male, mean age 51.3 years) who had roles 771 enterprises documented production. included 675 unique farmer-farm combinations production, 139 125 swine. linked at least one participant approximately 63% farms, 53% 30% sheep 38% swine Nord-Trøndelag period. Using existing may be efficient way collecting large amounts research, using human surveys decrease response bias. However, quality resulting research will depend on used, thorough knowledge required.