What is a biosecurity measure? A definition proposal for animal production and linked processing operations

Abstract

While biosecurity, a central component of the One Health concept, is clearly defined, a harmonized definition of the term ´biosecurity measure´ (BSM) is missing. In turn, particularly at the farm and policy level, this leads to misunderstandings, low acceptance, poor implementation, and thus suboptimal biosecurity along the food animal production chain. Moreover, different views on BSMs affects making comparisons both at the policy level as well as in the scientific community. Therefore, as part of the One Health EJP BIOPIGEE project, a work group i) collected and discussed relevant inclusion and exclusion criteria for measures to be considered in the context of biosecurity and ii) conducted a systematic literature review for potentially existing definitions for the term BSM. This exercise confirmed the lack of a definition of BSM, underlining the importance of the topic. In the pool of articles considered relevant to defining the term BSM, specific research themes were identified. Based on these outcomes, we propose a definition of the term BSM: "A biosecurity measure (BSM) - is the implementation of a segregation, hygiene, or management procedure (excluding medically effective feed additives and preventive/curative treatment of animals) that specifically aims at reducing the probability of the introduction, establishment, survival, or spread of any potential pathogen to, within, or from a farm, operation or geographical area." The definition provides a basis for policymakers to identify factual BSMs, highlights the point of implementation and supports to achieve the necessary quality standards of biosecurity in food animal production. It also enables clear, harmonized, cross-sectoral communication of best biosecurity practices to and from relevant stakeholders and thus contribute to improving biosecurity and thereby strengthen the One Health approach.

Keywords: Biosecurity; Livestock; One health; Swine; Zoonotic disease prevention.

Fig. 1

PRISMA flow diagram for literature search progression applying the search terms “biosecurity measures” AND “pig OR swine”, adopted from [53]. After duplicates were removed, 419 articles remained, of which a total of 90 articles were manually extracted (one researcher per database) because they contained relevant information for the definition of biosecurity measure (329 were not considered further and excluded). In the next step, articles that were manually selected in duplicate by independent researchers (e.g., in both Pubmed and Scopus) were cleared of these duplicates, resulting in 34 final articles.

Fig. 2

Number of scientific papers (n = 419, search terms: “biosecurity measures” AND “pig OR swine”) published from 1992 to May 2021 in either open access (OA, turquoise) or non-open access journals (Non-OA, red), including PubMed®, Scopus, Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics™) and Google scholar scientific literature databases. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 3

Top Keywords of scientific papers representing the first selection in this study (n = 419; search terms: “biosecurity measures” AND “pig OR swine” including PubMed®, Scopus, Web of Science™ and Google scholar scientific literature databases accessed in May 2021).

Fig. 4

A: Hierarchical cluster analysis based on the occurrence of one of the 100 most frequent terms in an article in the final pool of papers (n = 34). B: Description of the six research clusters and the scientific topics they cover revealed by the clustering analysis. After additional full-text reading, the clusters were modified i.e., numbers of records in 4A being not concurrent with the numbers given in 4B.

Fig. 5

Defintion chart of the term “biosecurity measure” (dark green box) with the overall goal of reducing the probability of pathogen establishment, survival, or spread, thereby contributing to internal or external (light green boxes) biosecurity in animal production systems and related processing operations. Embedded in the two light blue boxes are the key fragments of the proposed definition of BSM. The light gray boxes below the central field, such as “production type” or “animal species” indicate the determining factors for the processes and physical tools (dark gray boxes) that include segregation, sanitation, or management procedures (orange box). In addition, the geographic region and the given climate are determining factors for the respective procedures and influence their implementation (dark blue box). The implementation of these procedures is further influenced by influencing factors (yellow boxes), such as temporal conditions (long- vs. short-term pathogen reduction effects), as well as human components (e.g., attitude or motivation towards the implementation) with the implementation of procedures, which are essential points to ensure the quality (effectiveness) of the respective measure (sand-colored box). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)