Biosecurity Strategies for Backyard Poultry: A Controlled Way for Safe Food Production

The people of rural and periurban India depend on backyard farming system for poultry meat and eggs. It is used by weaker sections of society, such as marginal farmers as insurance against crop failure, for ready cash and to ensure basic economic returns and the empowerment of women and children. However, backyard farming does not appear to be a promising strategy to achieve the poverty reduction until the production level is increased. The major constraint in increasing the production in backyard birds is microbial infection due to lack of biosecurity knowledge among the farmers. The mitigation of the microbial infection depends on the detection of the infection route and its prevention. The source of microbial infection (Salmonella, Escherichia coli) and their dissemination through the eggs in backyard flocks kept in different agroclimatic zones of West Bengal, a major egg producing state in India, was identified. The pattern of virulence gene specially associated with urinary tract infection and antibiotic resistance genes, such as extended spectrum β lactamase (ESBL) genes of the isolates was studied. The chapter will elaborate the backyard farming including breeds reared, housing, feeding with special emphasis on suggested biosecurity strategies and consequence of the adapted strategy.