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Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints
The shift from cure toward prevention in veterinary medicine involves the implementation of biosecurity. In cattle farming, the application of biosecurity measures has been described to a limited degree, yet no data on biosecurity on veal farms is available. A high degree of commingling of veal calv...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier B.V.
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31557684 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2019.104768 |
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author | Damiaans, Bert Renault, Véronique Sarrazin, Steven Berge, Anna Catharina Pardon, Bart Ribbens, Stefaan Saegerman, Claude Dewulf, Jeroen |
author_facet | Damiaans, Bert Renault, Véronique Sarrazin, Steven Berge, Anna Catharina Pardon, Bart Ribbens, Stefaan Saegerman, Claude Dewulf, Jeroen |
author_sort | Damiaans, Bert |
collection | PubMed |
description | The shift from cure toward prevention in veterinary medicine involves the implementation of biosecurity. In cattle farming, the application of biosecurity measures has been described to a limited degree, yet no data on biosecurity on veal farms is available. A high degree of commingling of veal calves from multiple farms causes frequent disease outbreaks, and thereby high antimicrobial usage and increased risk of antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the current implementation of biosecurity on veal farms in Belgium. To this extent, a list of the most important calf diseases (n = 34) was created, and risk factors and related biosecurity measures for these diseases were determined and included in a questionnaire. Herd visits and face-to-face interviews were conducted on 20 randomly selected veal farms, comprising 8.3% of the target population. A categorical principal component and clustering analysis were performed to determine the influence of the veal companies on the farms’ biosecurity level. Awareness of biosecurity was very low among the farmers. All farms used an “all-in, all-out” production system with calves originating from multiple farms without quarantine. On average, farms were filled in 11.4 days (range 2–52). The degree of commingling for these farms was 1.24, meaning that, on average, 124 calves originated from 100 farms. Veterinarians wore farm-specific boots on eight farms (40%) and farm-specific clothes on six farms (30%), while technical advisors wore farm-specific boots on six farms (30%) and farm-specific clothes on four farms (20%). Disinfection footbaths were only used in five farms (25%) despite being present in all farms in the sample. Concerning internal biosecurity, none of the farmers isolated sick animals; only one farmer (5%) had a physically separated hospital pen, and only 11 farmers (55%) both cleaned and disinfected the stables after each production cycle. In most farms, animals were of comparable age. Healthy calves generally remained in the same compartment during the entire production cycle, limiting the risks associated with the movement of animals. No influence of the integrations on the biosecurity level could be determined. It can be concluded that a few biosecurity measures, such as “‘all-in, all-out” and compartmentation, are implemented relatively well, while other measures, such as good cleaning and disinfection and proper entrance measures for visitors and personnel can easily be improved. The improvement of measures regarding the introduction of animals of different origins will require more fundamental changes in the veal industry. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7127683 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-71276832020-04-08 Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints Damiaans, Bert Renault, Véronique Sarrazin, Steven Berge, Anna Catharina Pardon, Bart Ribbens, Stefaan Saegerman, Claude Dewulf, Jeroen Prev Vet Med Article The shift from cure toward prevention in veterinary medicine involves the implementation of biosecurity. In cattle farming, the application of biosecurity measures has been described to a limited degree, yet no data on biosecurity on veal farms is available. A high degree of commingling of veal calves from multiple farms causes frequent disease outbreaks, and thereby high antimicrobial usage and increased risk of antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the current implementation of biosecurity on veal farms in Belgium. To this extent, a list of the most important calf diseases (n = 34) was created, and risk factors and related biosecurity measures for these diseases were determined and included in a questionnaire. Herd visits and face-to-face interviews were conducted on 20 randomly selected veal farms, comprising 8.3% of the target population. A categorical principal component and clustering analysis were performed to determine the influence of the veal companies on the farms’ biosecurity level. Awareness of biosecurity was very low among the farmers. All farms used an “all-in, all-out” production system with calves originating from multiple farms without quarantine. On average, farms were filled in 11.4 days (range 2–52). The degree of commingling for these farms was 1.24, meaning that, on average, 124 calves originated from 100 farms. Veterinarians wore farm-specific boots on eight farms (40%) and farm-specific clothes on six farms (30%), while technical advisors wore farm-specific boots on six farms (30%) and farm-specific clothes on four farms (20%). Disinfection footbaths were only used in five farms (25%) despite being present in all farms in the sample. Concerning internal biosecurity, none of the farmers isolated sick animals; only one farmer (5%) had a physically separated hospital pen, and only 11 farmers (55%) both cleaned and disinfected the stables after each production cycle. In most farms, animals were of comparable age. Healthy calves generally remained in the same compartment during the entire production cycle, limiting the risks associated with the movement of animals. No influence of the integrations on the biosecurity level could be determined. It can be concluded that a few biosecurity measures, such as “‘all-in, all-out” and compartmentation, are implemented relatively well, while other measures, such as good cleaning and disinfection and proper entrance measures for visitors and personnel can easily be improved. The improvement of measures regarding the introduction of animals of different origins will require more fundamental changes in the veal industry. Elsevier B.V. 2019-11-15 2019-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7127683/ /pubmed/31557684 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2019.104768 Text en © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Damiaans, Bert Renault, Véronique Sarrazin, Steven Berge, Anna Catharina Pardon, Bart Ribbens, Stefaan Saegerman, Claude Dewulf, Jeroen Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
title | Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
title_full | Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
title_fullStr | Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
title_full_unstemmed | Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
title_short | Biosecurity practices in Belgian veal calf farming: Level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
title_sort | biosecurity practices in belgian veal calf farming: level of implementation, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses and constraints |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31557684 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2019.104768 |
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