Center of Dairy Excellence Dairy Markets & Management Update

Why do you keep hearing about biosecurity, and what is it?: Production systems are ever changing, while wildlife and domestic animal populations continue to present new disease challenges. Because of this, there are ever changing ideas on how one protects their animals from external disease concerns and how a producer can protect their community when faced with a disease challenge.

Biosecurity at its core is a set of procedures and practices intended to protect animals against disease or harmful biological agents. The U.S. Association of State Departments of Agriculture defined biosecurity as “the vital work of strategy, efforts and planning to protect human, animal and environmental health against biological threats.” Prior to late 2023 and early 2024, biosecurity was something the dairy industry discussed only when talking about a potential foot and mouth disease outbreak. Biosecurity was a concept that seemed to be implemented on paper more than in practice on large animal facilities. While many dairies have vaccination and quarantine protocols in place for their herds and for bringing in new animals, that is often where biosecurity stops on a dairy farm.

Unfortunately, poultry and swine production producers have faced both foreign animal disease challenges and production diseases for many years. Using three biosecurity principals, they have typically been able to reduce infections and slow or stop the spread of pathogens from complex to complex. Just like with any plan, they are not all perfect and are continually improved on. Many compartments of the swine industry have been able to free themselves from Porcine epidemic diarreha virus infections. Many poultry producers have also implemented biosecurity protocols to protect their flocks from HPAI. During the 2015-2016 HPAI outbreak in poultry, many flocks were infected by what is called lateral spread. This is the spread of a pathogen from one farm to another via a person or shared equipment. Since the 2015-16 outbreak, poultry farms have extensively implemented increased structural and procedural biosecurity practices.

The infections from lateral spread in the 2022-2024 poultry outbreaks has been reduced to very few cases. Biosecurity practices are best when followed all year long. However, following these practices is critical when a disease is circulating. Many of the routine or foreign animal diseases that exist are spread by vectors that we may not be able to control. For that reason, some level of the biosecurity principles should be always followed.

A comprehensive biosecurity program should represent a hierarchy of conceptual, structural, and procedural components. These components are layered to prevent vectors (insects or animals) and fomites (objects) from spreading diseases across farms, companies, facilities, regions, and beyond.

Conceptual biosecurity, the initial planning phase of a biosecurity program, revolves around the farm or animal system’s location in respect to other farms, animal facilities, wildlife, and isolation from other common equipment or shared personnel and housing.

Unfortunately most producers don’t have a lot of control of where exactly their farm is located, especially as animal production agriculture becomes more diverse and continues to grow. However, the next key concept of a biosecurity program is to think about the structural biosecurity. This key concept is vastly different in every production system.

The implementation of structural biosecurity is where most get stuck. Many think they need to have all the elements of a biosecurity plan or it’s not worth the effort. Every little bit of improvement helps reduce the chance for contamination or spread.

The most common factors of structural biosecurity program are overall layout/ design, exclusion (fencing), drainage, personnel entrance/ exit, vehicle or equipment movement, animal handling and housing areas, and visitor control. When developing a biosecurity program, it is important to understand the routine procedures of the operation to prevent introduction.

Procedural biosecurity and processes under that umbrella deal with routine procedures to prevent introduction (bioexclusion) and spread (biocontainment) of infection within a facility. Examples include taking a shower or changing footwear and personal clothes with farm-dedicated clothes and footwear before entry into the farm, washing hands, and disinfecting equipment at the point of entry. When working on multiple age facilities, it is important to understand best practices for workflow for the care of animals, working from our youngest stock to oldest, and then to caring for any sick animals last so employees don’t spread diseases and pathogens back to our healthy animals.