dear Gerald
Sorry for my late answer.
In the Med area, we noticed also this difference in biosecurity application between large and small scale APBs. The most advance farms in term of biosecurtity application are hatcheries which is logic as fingerlings are often transferred from countries to countries. And I must say that after all these year working in this sector, we can see that one of the main reason has been the standards set up by quality charts and labels which have pushed farmers to apply those rules. We always have some difficulties to convince small units to apply biosecurity as it represents a cost and an effort from them and they do not see always the direct income they will gain for it;
The other factor which has pushed to apply biosecurity rules has been the EU Directive 2006/88. Aquaculture business autorisation are granted to the farms if they apply minimum biosecurity rulles. But unfortunately, these Directive is not inforced the same way or at the same level in all Mediterranean EU countries. Third part non EU countries tend to follow the same rules in their legislation and all around the Med, biosecurity level is increasing.
Dear professor
nice to have you on board. Defining economical and practical tools is, of course, important; but those cannot be the same ones for all units, especially land-based units independent from natural environmental water and sea-based units dependant from the environmental waters; But something I find often underestimated is the risk of disease spread by transport (trucks or well boats) There are no or few C&D procedures for transport trucks and boats and very few controls of the proper application of these C&D procedures; Even if some farms are starting to control the level of cleaning and disinfection of trucks on arrival by bacterial count or even better ATP metry, most are not controlling it. And nothing really in place with well boat. Different publications have shown that viral disease propagation have often been related to transfer of fish. Batch control and certification is mandatory, biosecurity in units as well but what efficiency if transport means are not really controlled?
Dear Pr. Palic,
I’m so happy that you joined the forum, it a great opportunity for many of us. I’m sure that fish farmers will be very interested in reading your comments.
I’ll start with 3 questions:
1/ We talk a lot on practical approaches in order to implement biosecurity measures in a farm, but what about maintaining biosecurity? What records should be kept, how are they revised? at what frequency?
2/ A specific case or may be an example for many countries, in Tunisia, communication, promotion, education and social mobilization interventions have led to the identification of many core areas in order to develop realistic, cost-effective and sustainable measures in marine farms. common missing needs and investments exist. According to your experience will it be easier to apply a biosecurity plan on individual farms or by defining common epidemiological units?
3/ Strengthening communication is an integral part in the management of infectious diseases. This should be undertaken through the direct and continuous involvement and consultation with all stakeholders, but how can we promote disease reporting to veterinary authorities? What is the best way to ensure interaction and coordination at both private and public levels? How can we enhance Biosecurity in the commercial sector and at all levels of the production chain so that improved biosecurity becomes a real and rewarding investment?
Nadia
those cannot be the same ones for all units
Dear Dr Le Breton, I completely agree, and actually I would extend upon your statement above in that every epidemiological unit (EpiUnit, be it just one cage/pond, farm, region, or the whole country, or even larger regions) is unique. And what is common for any biosecurity program development for any EpiUnit is the process of developing it so that it will be both practical and affordable, as well as conforming with, and supportive of national regulations and international standards. One of the reasons why IAVBC approach to development of biosecurity programs has been well received is that through intensive consultations with OIE, FAO, and many other stakeholders (industry in particular), we managed to simplify regulatory and standardization texts, and "translate" the biosecurity requirements to be understandable to a "common man" be that a producer, a veterinarian, or a government employee.
Looks like 3/4 of my reply to Dr Le Breton (regarding transport issues) was deleted due to "edit expiraiton". I am sorry for that and I will try to re-capture it later.
@MODERATOR : is there a way to insert a figure/graphic in the system so we can refer to it during discussions? I attached it to this message, but I don't know if it can be displayed in the message? It says I am not allowed to upload pdf file.
Dear Dr Cherif, pelase find answers/comments below:
1/ We talk a lot on practical approaches in order to implement biosecurity measures in a farm, but what about maintaining biosecurity?
I don't think you can look at the biosecurity as one-time event. It is a continuing effort, without a real end, but with a real and achievable goal (e.g. freedom of a certain disease). To maintain this status, you need to maintain biosecurity. Regular updates of the biosecurity program and continuous upgrades of disease entry/exit critical control points must be built-in the production routine.
What records should be kept, how are they revised? at what frequency?
As discussed above (@Le Breton), each EpiUnit is very specific, but there are commonalities that can be addressed. It all depends really on the ultimate goal of your biosecurity plan/program. There are records that you are required to keep because of regulations (or other legal obligations, e.g. diagnostic reports) and also records that may help you optimize biosecurity actions (e.g. visitors log). Each will serve a purpose, and it is up to the biosecurity team to decide which records and in what fomat are kept. I hope there will be an option to put in a figure that describes the IAVBC approach to biosecurity, as it will make it much easier to discuss/explain.
2/ A specific case or may be an example for many countries, in Tunisia, communication, promotion, education and social mobilization interventions have led to the identification of many core areas in order to develop realistic, cost-effective and sustainable measures in marine farms. common missing needs and investments exist. According to your experience will it be easier to apply a biosecurity plan on individual farms or by defining common epidemiological units?
There may be some terminology issues that need to be clarified and agreed upon before we go into deeper discussion regarding zoning, establishments, EpiUnits, regions, etc. For example:
An Epidemiological Unit, is a group of animals that share approximately the same risk of exposure to a pathogenic agent, within a defined location. This may be because they share a common aquatic environment (e.g. fish in a pond, caged fish in a lake), or because management practices make it likely that a pathogenic agent in one group or population of animals would quickly spread to other animals (e.g. all the ponds on a farm, all the ponds in a village system) (OIE, 2019a – Glossary). An epidemiological unit can be small (an individual farm that OIE terms an “establishment”, or a farm that might be in different locations but all animals and husbandry practices are managed as a single population, which OIE calls a “compartment”), or large geographical areas (several farms, a state or province, a single watershed, or a whole country). Any geographic area that somehow separates one group of animals from another can be the EpiUnit, provided that all animals in each unit are managed in the same way. The separation can be a physical barrier, or simply separated by distance – but the animal population in each unit must not co-mingle with animals outside the unit (Palić, et al., 2015). The OIE clearly expands the concept of epidemiological units to larger geographic units such as compartment, zone, or country (OIE, 2019a, Chapters 4.1 and 4.2 – Zoning and Compartmentalization). Furthermore, these concepts can also be used to develop and implement biosecurity plans to prevent, control and eradicate any disease, on any type of operation or establishment (Palić and Scarfe 2018), whether the disease or pathogen is listed by OIE or is regulated by a governmental authority, or not.
3/ Strengthening communication is an integral part in the management of infectious diseases. This should be undertaken through the direct and continuous involvement and consultation with all stakeholders, but how can we promote disease reporting to veterinary authorities? What is the best way to ensure interaction and coordination at both private and public levels? How can we enhance Biosecurity in the commercial sector and at all levels of the production chain so that improved biosecurity becomes a real and rewarding investment?
These questions are excellent, and I agree that communication is essential in establishing goals that you plan to achieve with biosecurity. Again, I suggest we wait for the figure upload (@MODERATOR) before we go into detalied discussion. The figure is attached to this message, so I suggest to review it and then revisit. Briefly, a certification process may be a good way to encourage producers to embrace biosecurity.
There are no or few C&D procedures for transport trucks and boats and very few controls of the proper application of these C&D procedures; Even if some farms are starting to control the level of cleaning and disinfection of trucks on arrival by bacterial count or even better ATP metry, most are not controlling it. And nothing really in place with well boat. Different publications have shown that viral disease propagation have often been related to transfer of fish. Batch control and certification is mandatory, biosecurity in units as well but what efficiency if transport means are not really controlled
I think you may be confusing compliance ("most are not controlling it") and process ("... no or few C&D procedures... very few controls..."). I do agree on the former (lack of compliance), but I disagree on the latter (C&D process). The cleaning and disinfection protocols for vehicles, and other transport means/measures are very well described in multiple texts, instructions and online tools. One example for C&D protocols (including aquaculture) can be found at http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Disinfection/Assets/Disinfection101.pdf and more detailed protocols for well boats C&D and their role in epidemiology of ISAV can be found here (Norwegian Veterinary Insititute).
On the other hand, even in a best biosecurity program, if there is no compliance with protocols, procedures and keeping records, there is a biosecurity hole, that we call "disease entry/exit critical control point". So it is in my opinion not that much about not knowing what to do about C&D of transport fomites (trucks well boats, tanks, nets etc), but more about actually doing it.
What does help in my experience, is to have at least three stakeholders (on farm level, but also consider it as option for higher organization levels such as region or country): a producer (farm manager, owner, or similar), a veterinarian (public or private, may be accompanied with a paraveterinarian such as fish health professional) and a government official (local or higher, but responsible for aquatic animal health/veterinary issues). When those three go through series of steps in developing a biosecurity plan, and then agree to implement it as program, and maintain it as continuous process with a goal of disease prevention and control (see figure that I am waiting on moderatos to explain me how to upload and show in this conversation), it becomes more difficult to avoid compliance, as good record keeping will make it easier to trace the problem. A third-party certification scheme, possibly backed by government is of high importance to verify compliance with written biosecurity plan for any EpiUnit.
Dear prof
I agree on most of your points especially to bring together persons having different points of view to establish a practicle andapplicable biosecurity plan (administrative people for legislation, veterinarian, farmer for technical issues,...)
I also agree about compliance and process. One of my main work today is to apply biosecurity plan in marine fish production especially hatcheries and land based units.
Definitively, there is a lack of compliance in many cases. And a lot of documents are describing C&D procedures including the one you mentionned and which is a good synthetic one
However, technologies are changing inducing nzew problematics. And most of the C&D procedures describes are not fully adapted to new technology process applied in Aquaculture which can generate problems. I give you an exemple: for once in the document you mentionned, they well underline the critical point of assessing the efficacy of disinfection procedures. But it is not adapted to transport truck of live fish. If your truck arrive in the hatchery, how will you control its disinfection, knowing that within few hours, he will be loaded and will have left the farm. Classic Petri film or other methods for bacterial surface control give an answer within 24h.
There is very few published onATPmetry for example thatwe are trying to standerdise for the last year and which give an imediate answer. and then you dicover new problematic with that approach: critical points of contamination on trucks such as the cabin (well knownin poultryand porc transport) but howyou disinfect the cabin, or the valves of the pipes in the cuves:I do not know standard C&D procedures which are going so dip in details; But it is where are the risks. We are also looking at adapted fumigation procedures, steam or other approach for trucks. but not easy depending of the strucutre of the material to disinfect
To resume, yes a lot of procedures are described but not always well adapted to disinfection procedures. another exemple could be disinfecting in place a RAS...
If you have good documents on that, I will be interrested. But the points you mentionned are of importance.
That is one of the most important point: to have a document that will be easily understandable by those who need to put it in place and the further step is to train the people who will have to apply this biosecurity rules daily: workers, quality managers,.. If they do not understand the reasons of these measures, I can tell you that after few days they will not apply them as they will see it as a constraint.
And all biosecurity plan need to be seen as a master documment that requires to be adapted to the specific constraints of the unit consider (tank, production unit, farm, region,...) that fully agree with you
Dear all,
Thanks for creating this interesting topic.
What Alain mentioned about the transportation vehicles disinfection is a must from a practical point of view. And to keep track of these disinfection procedures, first it is needed to standardize the procedures on an official and EU level and then to have certification bodies for the disinfection procedures. Same should be applied for feed transporting vehicles. On a perfect world any vehicle entering a site would only be allowed after showing a disinfection record certified by a third party.
I would like to bring another topic to the discussion. From my point of view, the main risk factors in terms of biosecurity on ongrowing facilities in the Mediterranean is the continuous flow of fish supply in each farm, creating multigenerational sites. The epidemiological unit becomes the cage rather than the site, and on an open type of production this is a complete mistake, perpetuating diseases and turning them endemic.
In the nordic countries, the farmers gathered together to fight ISA and established management areas with single generation sites and fjords, fallowing procedures and now even implementing antiparasitic treatments on a management area rather than a single site or single cage.
In the Mediterranean, we very rarely hear about this topic. I know that many will think that it would not be economically viable to stop the production for a couple of months. But considering the already long production cycles we have, and very likely the decrease on disease costs (mortality, loss of growth, treatments, increasing of cycle times), is it really that more expensive? I would be interested in hearing someone else opinion on this, particularly now that we see more and more small businesses being taken by bigger companies, which creates an unique opportunity for the companies to establish the fish sales based on different sites, rather than a single site.
Regards,
Nuno Ribeiro
Veterinarian
Dear Nuno,
Many thanks for your comment. I fully agree with your description of the current situation in the Mediterranean. From the point of view of small farmers which we have in Croatia, it is hard to persuade them even to think in this way. They are buying fry from at least two hatcheries to avoid the bad quality of fry. They are seeding fry in spring and autumn to cover their customers all year round and this is indeed a risk. Actually, we experienced the spreading of VNN entered into the farm with a batch from the hatchery and eventually all other categories contracted the diseases. However, big companies with several sites have conditions to organise the production of different batch and different category of fish on different site. I'd appreciate very much if someone working in such a big company consisting of several sites could explain to us why they are not organising their production in a much secure way?
Dear members fo the MedAID Online Health forum,
With great pleasure, I am informing you that we have completed the
"MedAID's Diagnostic Manual for the main pathogens in European seabass and Gilthead seabream aquaculture" and it is already available on the internet, on the following link:
https://om.ciheam.org/option.php?IDOM=1037
All of you are very welcome to download it and to use it.
Best wishes
Snježana
For the samplings, it is random and occasional, (I have to verify this more). However, since Koi carps are ornamental fish, the burden of proof is mostly on health attestation by the exporting CAs because our testings for KHV molecular-based and require organ samples. If samplings are done, we usually opt for 2% prevalence samplings. Whether this is good or bad, we bear all the cost of samplings and testings.
Latest Post: Welcome to a new discussion topic Our newest member: admin_hosting Recent Posts Unread Posts
