305 Awardee Talk: Transferring a culture of biosecurity to the feedmill

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Abstract A culture of on-farm biosecurity has been established and practiced by modern swine production systems for many years. The value of this has been repeatedly demonstrated through improved animal health and performance based on the prevention of disease introduction to the herd. With the introduction of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV) to the US swine industry in 2013, we have learned that feed and feed ingredients can be vectors of disease transmission. Therefore, there is a heightened need to transfer our on-farm biosecurity culture to our feedmills and entire feed supply chain as a way to help prevent disease introduction into swine farms. Feedmills are designed to efficiently and effectively blend feed components into a homogenous batch, and the potential to distribute contaminated feed to multiple farms is significant. While feed and ingredients can be vectors of disease and pathogen transmission, our data continues to show that people are a major risk for pathogen transmission throughout the feed supply chain. Key biosecurity principles such as exclusion, prevention, isolation, mitigation, disinfection, and containment should be adopted and enforced for a strong feedmill biosecurity program. A written feedmill biosecurity plan should be developed and a training program that covers all employees as well as visitors and delivery drivers should be implemented. Continuous risk assessment and environmental monitoring should be utilized to identify new areas of risk and to assess the current status. Unfortunately, feedmills are nearly impossible to completely disinfect and therefore every effort should be made to prevent the introduction of pathogens into the mill. Research that we have conducted with PEDV and African Swine Fever Virus has demonstrated that adopting a culture of biosecurity at the feedmill will reduce risk of disease and pathogen exposure on farms.