• Livestock

Online check of farm farm-level risk factors for Avian Influenza infection

The BroilerNet project involves a bottom-up approach to identify challenges and innovation needs for broiler farmers in Europe, and to collect promising and already successfully implemented Good Practices to meet the challenges in questions. The top Good Practices selected by experts within the three thematic areas (animal health management, animal welfare and sustainability) have been summarized in factsheets. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been a global problem for wild birds and poultry production for years. Originally, HPAI was a seasonal phenomenon, but the virus now occurs year year-round in several regions of the world. As a result, the virus can be introduced into poultry flocks via a variety of pathways. The most common transmission route is the human carrying the pathogen onto farms. HPAI is highly infectious, causes severe general signs of disease and leads to high mortality rates, so that an infected flock must be completely culled. Increasing biosecurity at farm level can reduce the risk of HPAI being introduced. An online tool has been developed in Germany for broiler farmers, herd veterinarians and advisors to enable individual assessment of farm and pathogen pathogen-specific biosecurity concepts.