Biocheck.UGent: A risk-based tool to assess the status of biosecurity in backyard poultry in low- and middle-income countries

Backyard poultry farming is common in rural areas worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where approximately 80 % of rural households are involved. Effective biosecurity assessments are essential to prevent diseases and therefore, this study aimed to develop a risk-based weighted scoring system to evaluate biosecurity levels in backyard poultry households in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), as well as to describe its use in Bangladesh. A questionnaire was drafted with input from backyard poultry experts, followed by weights were attributed to the answers to obtain a weighted and risk-based questionnaire where scores represent the level of biosecurity measures. A score of 0 indicates absence of biosecurity measures, while 100 implies optimal biosecurity. The questionnaire was pretested with 20 households in Savar, Dhaka. Subsequently, 384 households were randomly selected from six districts in Bangladesh, based on the poultry population and consistent backyard poultry rearing. The scoring system is freely available online at https://biocheckgent.com/en/. External biosecurity (50 questions) was assessed in the following subcategories: purchase of eggs or day-old chicks, purchase of laying hens, depopulation and transport of poultry and poultry products, feed and water supply, visitors and farm personnel, manure and carcass removal, infrastructure and biological vectors of the farm, location of the farm. Internal biosecurity (13 questions) was subdivided in disease management and cleaning and disinfection. The average biosecurity scores for the external and internal categories were 30.3 % and 32.4 %, respectively. The two highest mean external biosecurity scores were obtained for depopulation and transport of poultry and poultry products (mean= 56.0 %) and manure and carcass removal (mean = 37.5 %) while the lowest means score was obtained for the category visitors and farm workers (mean = 12.4 %). In the internal biosecurity category, cleaning and disinfection had the highest mean score (34.1 %). Besides backyard production, small-scale commercial broiler production was present in 7 % of the visited households and the biosecurity score in these households was on average higher compared to those without commercial farming. This study reveals sub-optimal levels of biosecurity among backyard poultry in Bangladesh, as evaluated through the Biocheck.UGent scoring tool which has shown to be valuable for addressing biosecurity challenges in backyard production in low- and middle-income countries. The observed biosecurity gaps expose the poultry system to considerable risks of introduction and spread of infectious diseases.