Biosecurity User Guide
The user guide identifies the issues, provides measures, and gives examples that the farm can apply to achieve the standard.
This user guide is an adjunct (supplement) to the Biosecurity Standards. The intent is that this manual be used by the farm manager in consultation with the veterinarian, for example, to help establish procedures for an effective biosecurity plan for your farm(s). Using the explanation and details that are applicable to your farm can help develop a plan that achieves the standard. The plan will include:
What facilities (such as gates, locks and change areas) should be put in place.
What protocols (Standard Operating Procedures or SOP's) are needed.
What measures apply to your farm(s) depends on the risk of each particular route of contamination and which diseases may be of most importance to your farm. Several factors will influence the farm's biosecurity plan such as:
The production model – is the farm rearing pigs solely indoors or does it involve stages that are outdoors.
The type of production – a breeding stock producer versus a market hog production herd.
Single farm versus multi-site production system.
Location and degree of isolation of the site.
A risk analysis must be considered by each farm when designing the program. The examples provided may not include all of the points discussed in the best management practices section but have been effective for the farms and companies using them, given their risk analysis.
Organization of the User Guide
The format of the layout of each section referring to potential contamination routes is as follows:
A reference to the applicable standards (eg. 2.1.1) – these are hyperlinked to the National Biosecurity Standard on the website.
A brief statement explaining the Best Management Practices in bold
1. Best Management Practices (BMP's) are numbered – The user guide will combine several specific standards where the BMP's applied would be similar. An example would be combining the BMP's that might be implemented to introduce live pigs from a domestic source, semen or embryos from a domestic source and those from a foreign country. Many of the BMP's are the same but the differences are noted.
a. Factors to consider when developing BMP's for your farm are indented and numbered.
b. Training Tools (on the website) – examples of BMP's, protocols, and designs, templates of protocols, schematics and photographs of details discussed in the User Guide are hyperlinked (Example of a Quarantine) in green. When you pass your cursor over the green text, a bubble with the name of the Training Tool showing up. Click on the green text to go to the tool.