To help stem the tide of fluke infection, health workers have been trying a range of measures to change people's eating habits.

However, there was lower prevalence at the animal level, which may indicate significant variation in the exposure to fluke infection within herds.

These national datasets have not been analysed to assess their utility in uncovering patterns in fluke infection at animal- and herd-levels in Northern Ireland.

Fluke infection status at the animal-level is captured during meat inspection of all animals processed for human consumption within Northern Ireland.

Introduction: The trematode infection schistosomiasis affects at least 200 million people in endemic areas.