Researchers at Ghent University in Belgium have developed online scoring tools to help assess biosecurity weaknesses on pig and poultry farms.
Initially developed for use as part of a multi-country research consortium called prohealth, the tools are now available to any farmer or farm manager intent on improving on-farm biosecurity.
The tools can be used to highlight a wide range of potential weaknesses, such as improper stocking density in nursery pigs, insufficient health monitoring of purchased breeding animals, lack of disinfection after emptying the stables, and so on.
The Ghent team also say the tools can be used to “open up discussion with everyone involved at farm level”, including addressing the issues surrounding porcine epidemic diarrhoea (PED) in Europe.
“The scoring tools are species-specific and have been developed in order to score practices in an objective and standardised way across Europe,” they said.