A self-assessment tool to improve poultry farm biosecurity regarding avian influenza

Abstract

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) poses an important threat to poultry farming and the whole value chain. Since biosecurity is a major strategy to reduce the risk of HPAI virus introduction into farms and poultry flocks, a self-assessment tool for farmers concerning their farm-specific biosecurity management was developed. It is based on a questionnaire referring to risk factors retrieved from the literature or elaborated by experts, respectively. The risk factors are related to farm-, biosecurity- and animal health-management. Their epidemiological relevance is expressed through weights that were determined by an expert panel in a two-stage Delphi approach. The overall risk of a farm is estimated as the complementary to the percentage compliance with the measures assuring a maximum biosecurity as represented by the compiled questions and their respective weights. The tool is offered as a free of charge, open-access web - based tool, the so-called AI-Risikoampel (AI-Risk Traffic Light), an online anonymous risk-check, which does not only allow to elicit farm-specific optimization potentials concerning biosecurity, but also generates a farm-specific to-do list with tasks ranked according to relevance. Biosecurity gaps may thus be closed by the farmer, possibly also in cooperation with a veterinarian or consultant. The to-date experience concerning the acceptance of the tool and the user statistics are presented.