Advisers’ perception of biosecurity implementation on large-scale poultry farms in Europe

Biosecurity is a fundamental preventive tool to control animal infectious diseases. The relationship between advisers and farmers plays a key role in determining farmers’ compliance with on-farm biosecurity measures (BMs). The aims of this survey were (1) to provide an overview on the implementation of biosecurity in European poultry farms as declared by the advisers and (2) to better understand advisers’ perception of the reasons why farmers do not comply with biosecurity rules and pinpoint potential obstacles to their implementation. One hundred and fifty-seven advisers working in various poultry sectors (breeders, enclosed and free-range layers, enclosed and free-range meat poultry) were interviewed to give their opinion on the implementation of 62 BMs. The advisers’ replies (n = 6485) on the implementation of BMs were reported as “always” (67.6 %), “sometimes” (19.8 %) and “never” (8.1 %) implemented. The advisers from the local governmental institutions declared a significantly lower percentage of “always implemented” replies (62 %) than those from other categories (producer organisations (73.7 %), companies (73.8 %) and veterinary clinics (67 %)). Regardless of the poultry sector, the most commonly implemented BMs declared by the advisers were the “daily surveillance of birds”, “flock register”, “rodent control” and “feed storage protection”. The BMs declared as the least commonly implemented were “visitors and personnel showering before entering the poultry house” for all the surveyed productions and “personnel hand washing” for all the production types except breeders. Some hygiene practices were also declared to be poorly implemented in most of the surveyed productions such as the “cleaning/disinfection of the rendering tank after each collection”, the “presence of concrete area around the house”, the “use of separate material for the poultry house” and the “restriction of domestic animals entering the site” and especially in meat poultry “the bacterial self-check of the house” and “the cleaning/disinfection of the feed silo between each flock”. According to the advisers ‘reports, the reasons why farmers do not comply with biosecurity on their farm were insufficient knowledge of biosecurity issues (“not enough training” 12.3 % and “not enough advice” 8.5 %), low awareness of the expected benefits (“no known advantages” 14 % and “not useful” 4.6 %), the lack of time (17.8 %), financial issues (16.8 %) and the unsuitability of the measures (17.4 %). This study highlighted, from the European advisers ’point of view, the shortcomings of the implementation of biosecurity on poultry farms and a room of improvement requiring adapted and tailored support measures for a better biosecurity compliance.