Advisory council presses for One Health surveillance upgrades and privacy protections to boost farm data sharing

Council discussion of Goal 2 centered on strengthening One Health surveillance and resolving barriers that limit cross‑sector data sharing.

Several liaison and council members noted fragmentation across human, veterinary and environmental surveillance that undermines comparability. "Building trust between the producer and the government and how that data could be acquired, kept private, and don't be used for, you know, punishing the producer is a key worry out there," Dr. Lucas Pantaleon said, summarizing a recurring objection from agricultural participants. Paul Plummer noted that U.S. human health data benefits from well‑known privacy frameworks (HIPAA) that do not exist equivalently for animal or environmental AMR data, which discourages sharing.

Speakers recommended concrete actions: harmonize definitions and testing methods to make human, animal and environmental datasets comparable; expand funding for continuous programs such as NARMS, FDA Vet‑LIRN and APHIS dashboards; make genomic sequence repositories easier to access and use for cross‑sector work; develop privacy/confidentiality frameworks or statutory protections to reduce economic and reputational risks for producers; and invest in incentives or subsidies so lower‑resourced veterinary diagnostic labs can perform susceptibility testing.

The council also highlighted environmental surveillance gaps (aquatic and crop systems) and urged standardized methods to permit integration with clinical and food surveillance. Members recommended workforce development to operate and interpret genomic and wastewater data and emphasized that surveillance investments must be sustained rather than one‑off pilots.