Keeping animals for food involves the risk of infectious diseases which might cause harm to animals, humans and the environment. Veterinary medicine aims to reduce the impact of animal diseases through prevention and treatment. However, antimicrobial usage should be reduced worldwide and therefore protecting animals against diseases and maintaining their health is crucial. To do so, the introduction and spread of pathogens into and on a farm should be prevented via the implementation of biosecurity measures.
Although, it has been proven that biosecurity measures benefit animal health, food production, food safety and biodiversity, the implementation of biosecurity in livestock production remains largely insufficient. Furthermore, current focus is mainly on the intensive, conventional livestock production leaving a knowledge gap for other farming systems such as extensive, pasture-based, low-input, or organic production of livestock. There is an urgency to better understand the need and feasibility of biosecurity measures in those systems.
Firstly, the effectiveness of specific biosecurity measures on the transmission routes of pathogens should be investigated further to make it possible to rank biosecurity measures by importance. Furthermore, existing information on biosecurity will be brought together and will be used to make models predicting the influence of biosecurity measures on the introduction and spread of diseases which can be used to help farmers understand the role of biosecurity. Besides this, field data will be collected on the implementation of biosecurity in different farm types and studies will be performed to better understand the effectiveness of certain, specific biosecurity measures.
Sustainable livestock production requires good biosecurity and optimal animal welfare, which do not always align. Within BIOSECURE conflicting and complementing aspects of biosecurity and animal welfare will be identified, solutions will be investigated and communicated to the relevant stakeholders to optimize biosecurity without compromising the welfare of the animals.
Implementing biosecurity measures on the farm is the responsibility of the farmer. Many human factors such as costs, workload, and perceived usefulness, influence the decision making in biosecurity. Motivators and barriers affect the implementation of biosecurity measures but knowledge to overcome those barriers is lacking. There is a high need for quantification of economic benefits of biosecurity measures and tools to motivate farmers. The cost and benefits of biosecurity measures will be investigated in the BIOSECURE project at farm level and at a larger sector level. This information, combined with the developed models and collected existing data will result in practical guidelines for famers on how to implement and prioritize biosecurity measures. At higher, sector level, policy scenarios will be provided to increase biosecurity at national level. Furthermore, the economic impact of those policy scenarios will be evaluated. BIOSECURE's ultimate goal is to improve the capacity of all livestock stakeholders to understand, prioritize and implement evidence-based, cost-effective and sustainable biosecurity management systems in current and future terrestrial livestock production.
