Tom Koritnik ¹ Iskra Cvetkovikj ² Flavia Zendri ³ Shlomo E. Blum ⁴ Serafeim C. Chaintoutis ⁵ Peter A. Kopp ⁶ Cassia Hare ⁷ Zrinka Štritof ⁸ Sonja Kittl ⁹ José Gonçalves ¹⁰ Irena Zdovc ¹¹ Erik Paulshus ¹² Andrea Laconi ¹³ David Singleton ¹⁴ Fergus Allerton ¹⁵ Els M. Broens ¹⁶ Peter Damborg ¹⁷ Dorina Timofte ^14*

• ¹ Department for Public Health Microbiology Ljubljana, Centre for Medical Microbiology, National Laboratory of Health, Environment and Food (Slovenia), Ljubljana, Slovenia
• ² Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine Skopje, Saints Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia
• ³ Department of Veterinary Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology, Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
• ⁴ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Kimron Veterinary Institute, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Israel), Rishon LeZion, Central District, Israel
• ⁵ Diagnostic Laboratory, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece
• ⁶ IDEXX Vet Med Labor GmbH, Kornwestheim, Germany
• ⁷ Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
• ⁸ Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases with Clinic, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
• ⁹ Department of Infectious Diseases and Pathobiology, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern, Bern, Bern, Switzerland
• ¹⁰ NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon, Caparica, Portugal
• ¹¹ Institute of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• ¹² Department of Analysis and Diagnostics, Microbiology, Norwegian Veterinary Institute (NVI), Oslo, Oslo, Norway
• ¹³ Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food, School of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Padua, Legnaro, Veneto, Italy
• ¹⁴ Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, Department of Veterinary Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology, University of Liverpool, Leahurst Campus, Neston, England, United Kingdom
• ¹⁵ Willows Veterinary Centre, Solihull, West Midlands, United Kingdom
• ¹⁶ Department Biomolecular Health Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, Netherlands
• ¹⁷ Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Capital Region of Denmark, Denmark

Veterinary clinical microbiology laboratories play a key role in antimicrobial stewardship, surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and prevention of healthcare associated-infections. However, there is a shortage of international harmonised guidelines covering all steps of veterinary bacterial culture from sample receipt to reporting. In order to gain insights, the European Network for Optimization of Veterinary Antimicrobial Treatment (ENOVAT) designed an online survey focused on the practices and interpretive criteria used for bacterial culture and identification (C&ID), and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of animal bacterial pathogens. A total of 241 microbiology laboratories in 34 European countries completed the survey, representing a mixture of academic (37.6%), governmental (27.4%), and private (26.5%) laboratories. The C&ID turnaround varied from 1-2 days (77.8%) to 3-5 days (20%), and 6-8 days (1.6%), with similar timeframes for AST. Individual biochemical tests and analytical profile index (API) biochemical test kits were the most frequent tools used for bacterial identification (77% and 56%, respectively), followed by MALDI-TOF MS (46%). For AST, Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion (DD) and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination were conducted by 44% and 33% of laboratories, respectively, with a combination of EUCAST and CLSI clinical breakpoints (CBPs) preferred for interpretation of the DD (41.2%) and MIC (47.6%) results. In the absence of specific CBPs, laboratories used human CBPs (53%) or veterinary CBPs representing another body site, organism or animal species (51%). Importantly, most laboratories (47.9%) only report the qualitative interpretation of the result (S, R, and I). As regards testing for AMR mechanisms, 48.5% and 46.7% of laboratories routinely screened isolates for methicillin resistance and ESBL production, respectively. Notably, selective reporting of AST results (i.e. excluding highest priority critically important antimicrobials from AST reports) was adopted by 39.5% of laboratories despite a similar proportion not taking any approach (37.6%) to guide clinicians towards narrower-spectrum or first-line antibiotics. In conclusion, we identified a broad variety of methodologies and interpretative criteria used for C&ID and AST in European veterinary microbiological diagnostic laboratories. The observed gaps in veterinary microbiology practices emphasize a need to improve and harmonise professional training, innovation, bacterial culture methods and interpretation, AMR surveillance and reporting strategies.