English

Disseminating Innovative
Solutions for Antibiotic
Resistance Management
Instructive training on biosecurity and
application of Biocheck: a risk-based Quick Links
scoring tool for biosecurity on
 About DISARM
livestock farms
Jan 2020 / 0 Comments / in Biosecurity, Cattle, multi-actor  Aims and
farm health plans project page, NEWS, Pigs, Poultry / by Objectives
Laura Palczynski

 Multi-Actor

On 22 and 23 of January 2020, the Faculty of Community

 Knowledge
Database

 Multi-Actor Farm
Health Plans

 Creating
[https://disarmproject.eu/wp- information
content/uploads/2020/04/broiler-farm.jpg] resources
Veterinary Medicine of Ghent University hosted a
very instructive and interesting training on  Get Involved

biosecurity and the use of their Biocheck

[https://biocheck.ugent.be/en] , a tool to score  Research and
Innovation
and benchmark the biosecurity measures on
Database
livestock farms. The training nicely balanced
theoretical insights with hands-on practical
training and eld visits to a farrowing and broiler
farm to exercise the use of the Biocheck.

Five principles to biosecurity

Prof. Jeroen Dewulf, head of the chair on
epidemiology started the training with a lecture
on the ve main principles of biosecurity and English

practical examples to illustrate and respect these

principles in order to prevent disease from
entering the farm and spread within it. The
principles being:

1. Preventing direct and indirect contact

between potentially infectious and
susceptible animals
2. Not every route of transmission is equally
important, so not every biosecurity measure
is equally e ective

3. Lower the general infection pressure on the

farm to lower the burden on the immune
system of the animals

4. Size matters meaning that although

biosecurity is important on every farm, on
larger farms the risk and negative
consequences of disease outbreaks will be
much larger and harder to contain than on
smaller farms.
5. Frequency matters: the frequency of events
or actions happening on the farm determine
the risks. An event or action (e.g. feed truck
delivering feed) with a low probability of
infecting the farm per visit can pose a
substantial risk for the farm when it reoccurs
frequently.

Next, prof. Dewulf explained these principles and

suitable external and internal biosecurity
measures in more detail with practical examples
for pig production.

Scoring and benchmarking biosecurity

with Biocheck
The nal theoretical part of the rst day was English

focused on the UGhent’s Biocheck

[https://biocheck.ugent.be/en] . This innovative
risk-based scoring system can elevate the
European livestock sectors’ biosecurity status
since it is the rst system to quantitatively score
and benchmark the biosecurity of farms in pig,
poultry, dairy, beef and veal production. The
checklist evaluates the farm’s biosecurity
measures and takes into account the relative risks
of di erent infection transmission routes
resulting in an overall biosecurity score out of a
100 for the farm as well as detailed scores for
external and internal biosecurity separately. The
highest detail of scoring o ers farmers and vets
immediate insight into measures to improve
within both the domains of external and internal
biosecurity.

[https://disarmproject.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2020/04/Pig-farm.jpg]
In the afternoon, the theory on biosecurity in
general and the use of the Biocheck was nicely
illustrated with a visit to a farrowing farm of a
thousand sows and being a text book example of
managing biosecurity in pig production. Here
participants got the chance to exercise in
evaluating a farms’ biosecurity status by use of
the Biocheck.

Day 2: Focus on poultry production

The second day of training was English

focused on biosecurity in poultry

and especially broiler production.
D r Nele Caekebeke focused rst
on speci c biosecurity aspects in poultry
production, after which the participants had to
exercise in designing and improving biosecurity
measures on speci c broiler farms.

[https://disarmproject.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2020/04/broiler-farm-
e1585826595997.jpg]
The poultry training was nalized with another
eld visit to an integrated broiler farm where the
participants could practice the Biocheck scoring
in broiler production.

Get in touch to nd out more about

biosecurity training
If you are interested in the Biocheck scoring
system, or would like to participate in or organise
similar training in scoring and improving
biosecurity measures, please get in touch with
Prof. Jeroen Dewulf.
[mailto:jeroen.dewulf@ugent.be]

Share this entry

        
 English
0
REPLIES

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use
of cookies.

OK Learn more

How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you
visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize
your relationship with our website.

Click on the di erent category headings to nd out more. You can also change some of your
preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our
websites and the services we are able to o er.

Essential Website Cookies These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services
available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website,

refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always
can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and
force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always
prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking

you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You
are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a
better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set
cookies in our domain.
 We provide you with a list of stored cookiesEnglish
on your computer in our
domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons
we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You
can check these in your browser security settings.

Google Analytics Cookies These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate
form to help us understand how our website is being used or how
e ective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our
website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.

If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable
tracking in your browser here:

Other external services We also use di erent external services like Google Webfonts, Google
Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect
personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here.
Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and
appearance of our site. Changes will take e ect once you reload the
page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

 English

Other cookies The following cookies are also needed - You can choose if you want to allow
them:

Privacy Policy You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy
Policy Page.

Privacy Policy

Accept settings Hide noti cation only