Foot and mouth disease fears have driven transdisciplinary approaches to biosecurity across livestock industry segments. The current issues with high-path avian influenza in dairy cattle underscores the importance of biosecurity planning as it is the leading protection against diseases.
The Beef Checkoff-funded Beef Quality Assurance program proactively established biosecurity as part of its well-known certification and educational programs. It offers templates, including a daily biosecurity plan, that can be printed or used as fillable PDFs at www.bqa.org/resources/biosecurity-resources. In addition, assessment forms for feedyards, cow/calf and stocker/backgrounder operations are available at https://www.bqa.org/resources/templates-assessments. More resources are available at www.bqa.org.
Cattle producers in all sectors must continuously improve biosecurity planning and practices. This includes recordkeeping, annual assessment of their practices and employee training.
Considering the HPAI threat . . . cattle producers and their veterinarians need to collaborate to develop a biosecurity plan that suits each individual location and operation.”
Source: Beef Quality Assurance, August 17, 2022. Link. BQA is a program that provides systematic information to U.S. beef producers of how good husbandry techniques can be coupled with accepted scientific knowledge to raise cattle under optimum management conditions.