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

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.