The term “biosecurity” may evoke images of men in Tyvek suits and respirators, but in reality, it’s something we all think about as livestock producers.

At its core, “biosecurity” means to secure your premises from a biological threat – whether that’s Foot & Mouth Disease… your neighbor’s pneumonia outbreak… or whatever that cow you bought from the sale barn last week might be carrying!

All of these can be a threat to your animals and operation, so why wouldn’t you take steps to prevent these from happening, and to keep your livestock safe?

Below are some of the basic concepts of “biosecurity”:

Disease prevention – keeping disease from affecting your animals is the best way to ensure they thrive and produce well for you. Steps you can take to prevent disease from happening include;

1. Vaccinating your animals – not every disease has a vaccine, and not every farm needs to vaccinate for every disease. But vaccinating your animals for the diseases that they could possibly get will increase their immune system so that when they are exposed to other diseases, they will have a better chance of fighting them off.
2. Providing high-quality nutrition for your animals – an animal that is not being fed properly will not function properly physiologically, which means their immune system will be compromised, and their ability to fight disease is lowered.
3. Creating a low-stress environment for your animals – stress releases a hormone called cortisol, and cortisol suppresses the immune system. Rough handling, unsanitary living conditions, herd hierarchy… all contribute to immune system health, which affects how well your animals can fight disease.
4. Monitoring your animals regularly – this way, you’ll know when something is wrong, as soon as something is wrong.

Disease transmission – no matter how careful you are, you can’t stop your animals from ever getting sick. Therefore, you need to have a plan for controlling the spread, or “transmission”, of disease once you’ve identified that it’s a problem in your area, or your farm. Steps to controlling transmission include:

1. Perimeter fencing – keeping unwanted animals and people off your property decreases the chances they’ll accidentally spread disease to your animals. As a side-note, internal fencing is also good: not only does it facilitate pasture rotation, thereby controlling intestinal parasites, but if a group of your animals becomes sick, it doesn’t have to spread to the rest of your herd.
2. Isolating sick animals – keeping the animals you know are sick and contagious away from your healthy animals means you may only have to treat a few animals, and not infect your entire herd.
3. Treating sick animals – don’t wait until it’s about to die to call the vet. The sooner you have someone out to examine and treat your animal once you suspect something is wrong, the better you can contain the disease. There’s also a better chance your animal will survive and return to production!
4. Quarantining new animals – we all hope we’re buying healthy animals, but very often, we don’t know the medical history of the animals we add to our herds. “Quarantine” just means isolating any new animals away from your existing herds for at least 14 days, so you can watch for any signs of illnesses they may already be carrying. This way, you can catch it before it infects your entire herd.

Effects of disease – Any disease challenge on your animals means the nutrients that would normally go to gaining weight, growing a baby, or making milk gets taken away by their body to fight the illness. Regardless of the specific effects of a specific disease, this decreases the productivity of your animals, and affects your financial profitability. Therefore, practicing biosecurity — keeping diseases off your premises, or stopping further transmission from occurring — is a basic step to improved animal health, which leads to more income from your operation.

Some diseases are considered by governmental authorities to be “High-Consequence” livestock diseases – these are often diseases that can spread silently (really fast and far before anyone realizes there’s an infection), causes severe disease (kills or permanently disables the animal so that it can no longer be productive), or also sickens or kills humans (“zoonotic diseases”). Any of these could cost the the US livestock industry billions of dollars. This is not just due to immediate lost revenue from condemn carcasses, but also from trade embargoes of US animal products, along with global public perceptions of the safety of US animals products that can have long-term ramifications for many, many years following an outbreak.

For these reasons, if certain “Reportable Diseases” are identified in the United States, a State or Government agency must be notified, and the State Veterinarian will conduct an investigation. Depending on their findings, a National Livestock Emergency may be declared, and zones will be created depending on the spread and severity of the disease. In certain of these scenarios, you may be asked to depopulate your entire herd of a certain species, or all your animals completely. Once again, depending on the severity and spread of the disease, individual farmers may or may not be compensated for some or all of their losses.

Because of the economic fallout from these scenarios, it is understandable that the United States would rather strengthen biosecurity awareness and practices, than deal with the consequences of any of these diseases. In the same vein, you should also want to protect your animals and your livelihood by practicing proper livestock biosecurity!