Biosecurity

Biosecurity Compliance: The Balance Between Culture, Personality, Experience, Education and Technology

To read more content about AviNews September 2024

Endemic and emergent diseases remain a constant threat to poultry production, welfare, and the economy of the poultry industry worldwide. The prevention and control of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), Newcastle disease, and all other diseases depend mainly on implementing complete biosecurity compliance management programs.

Biosecurity encompasses infrastructure, technologies, techniques, management, and basic hygiene practices.

While poultry facilities, fencing, and equipment locations should be designed to facilitate biosecurity practices, effective communication is always a crucial factor.

Convincing all involved in the production system and potential visitors to incorporate biosecurity practices into their routines is a necessity.

  • Biosecurity measurements have been discussed many times. Effective biosecurity depends on strict, constant, and daily compliance at the farm and regional levels. Compliance with biosecurity, such as consistently following sanitation protocols, changing footwear, or respecting areas before entering a production facility, has been reported to reduce diseases significantly.

Unfortunately, poor compliance with biosecurity is an endemic problem in all types of animal production systems worldwide, and it is the main reason biosecurity may not be effective.

In all cases, the human factor is critical.

Many experts in biosecurity have concluded that to be successful in this task, it is necessary to create a culture of biosecurity, address personality traits, provide experiences, and most importantly, ensure continuous education.

However, it’s important to understand that no single intervention or corrective action can solve the problem of low biosecurity compliance.

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THE HUMAN FACTOR IN BIOSECURITY

The lack of biosecurity compliance is so prevalent in the whole animal industry that it has raised the need for a new area of research.

Humans should participate in the strategy, tactics, and operations, which are guided by a long-term objective. Biosecurity issues at the strategic scale are often related to network interactions of people located in diverse facilities and service providers across production chains.

Everybody who works or provides a service in a poultry facility must understand and follow the rules and procedures.

At the tactical level, farm managers or owners decide whether or not to invest in and implement preventive biosecurity protocols. From a narrower, more localized perspective, operational-level biosecurity can be viewed as a continuous series of decisions made by animal production workers indicating their willingness to follow or comply with daily biosecurity protocols.

Biosecurity compliance

Pressure to complete work efficiently with time constraints has created scenarios where farm workers find it unrealistically challenging to complete their jobs while complying with biosecurity standards.

Research has suggested that poultry farmers in the United States exhibit risk tolerance but may be more likely to implement or comply with biosecurity as their perceived risk of infection increases.

Worker decisions at the operational level have direct economic and sociological consequences when an outbreak occurs. Social cues, all nonverbal communication, and examples will result in different compliance strategies among individuals. The behavior of others, even if not directly impacting the individual, will impact their decision-making to comply with biosecurity measurements.

Workers in an animal facility may be exposed to various information about the consequences of an animal infection.

Still, they balance the cost of infection with complacency and a tendency to become lax in day-to-day activities.

It is generally perceived that short-term visits to the facilities are lower threats, and consequently, biosecurity procedures are forgotten in these cases, becoming the most common cause of outbreaks.

This relaxation of biosecurity effort has been examined from a temporal perspective, with evidence suggesting that people view the likelihood and impact of an animal disease event to be reduced as the time the event increases. Referred to as temporally based psychological distancing, the farther in the past an event occurs, the less likely and impactful such an event is perceived to be.

Studies have indicated that continuous training programs coupled with measure-specific training sessions based on observed needs should address issues related to visits by all poultry personnel and visitors.

Training should also address the notion of threat perception when engaging in protective behavior. This means infusing the concept that animal diseases may affect them directly in their income and their own health.

TECHNOLOGIES TO IMPROVE COMPLIANCE

RFID chips

Recently, Racicot et al. (2022) evaluated two technologies based on radio-frequency-identification (RFID) to monitor and continuously improve biosecurity compliance in poultry facilities.

Farm boots were equipped with RFID chips placed under the soles.

Three antennas in the barn entrance were connected to the RFID:

  1. The first in the frame of the exterior door identifying the person entering the barn (access card already used by employees),
  2. The second in the dirty area, allowing for the detection of chipped farm boots (indicating biosecurity non-compliance), and
  3. The third in the clean area, connected to the hand sanitizer, detecting hand sanitization when entering and leaving the clean area as well as the RFID chips in farm boots (indicating compliance with changing boots).

Two pressure mats (one in the dirty area and one in the clean area) were also installed in the barn entrance to facilitate the detection of visitors, assess the direction of people (i.e., entering vs. leaving), and detect a lack of compliance if farm boots were recorded in the clean area (Figure 1).

Results confirmed the ability of the RFID system to monitor boot and hand sanitizing compliance. A continuous monitoring system seems to improve biosecurity compliance, with almost twice the compliance percentage compared to previous studies using hidden cameras.

Biosecurity compliance

Figure 1. Radio-frequency-identification-based (RFID) real-time continuous automated monitoring system. (a) Soft chips inserted in work shoes used by personnel getting to the farm; (b) rigid chips inserted in the soles of farm boots; (c) RFID antenna; (d) Device (e-box) with data management program; (e) hand sanitizer device. Source: Racicot et al., 2022 Front. Vet. Sci. z

Cameras

The same group led by Racicot and collaborators had evaluated in 2012 hidden cameras at Quebec poultry farms. They documented 44 biosecurity lapses workers and visitors made over four weeks.

The presence of a visible camera in a barn entrance enhanced overall visit compliance, specifically boot and area compliance.

However, six months after its installation, compliance with the area during the visit was the only biosecurity measure
enhanced at the medium-term assessment.

Biosecurity compliance

Compliance declined over time

These results indicated that an automatic system for monitoring and recording each person’s activities could improve biosecurity compliance even more. More innovation is needed to implement this technology in other biosecurity practices. Technologies can help to overcome the challenges caused by the human factor in biosecurity compliance.

 

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