The importance of measuring biosecurity in animal production.

The objective of biosecurity is to keep infection pressure on the farm as low as possible and therefore, biosecurity should be the basis of any disease control program. Better biosecurity can increase production rates (growth, feed conversion ratio..) resulting in an increase in profit at sale. In addition, a reduction in antimicrobial usage can be achieved and this is becoming increasingly important in combating the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Biocheck.

UGent is a risk-based and independent scoring system which evaluates the quality of on-farm biosecurity. The Biocheck.UGent scoring system is an efficient tool to quantify the biosecurity level of farms by indicating both strong and weak points of the farm and to help set goals for monitoring and improving the biosecurity status of the farm. The online surveys can be filled out for free and are available in different languages and for different production systems such as pigs, cattle and poultry. The poultry category is extensively covered including surveys for laying hens, broilers, turkeys, breeders and ducks.

The scoring system was developed at the Veterinary Epidemiology unit, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Ghent University and has recently reached over 50,000 entries. The surveys are divided into subcategories of internal biosecurity (prevention of the spread of diseases within the farm) and external biosecurity (prevention of the introduction of disease into the farm). Each question is weighted differently based on the 5 principles of biosecurity and scientific research. The specific weights are equal to their relative importance for the transmission of disease. The report provides a score for both internal and external biosecurity individually, as well as an overall biosecurity score which is the weighted average of the internal and external scores. The scores can range anywhere from 0 (total absence of the described biosecurity measures) to 100 (full application of described biosecurity measures) and consequently enables you to compare you biosecurity results with the national (if sufficient data is available) and global averages totally free.

However, there is also an option to become an advanced user. For a yearly fee extra benefits such as receiving tailored feedback to answers given in the survey, sharing entries and results with colleagues, creating your farms own benchmark value to compare results and track progress and improving your biosecurity knowledge with the Biocheck online E-learning modules. Biocheck. UGent has already been used multiple times in Africa and we hope to expand on this in the near future. For more information contact us on info@ biocheckgent.com or visit our website https:// biocheckgent.com/