Farm Biosecurity
Farm biosecurity means preventing the introduction of infectious agents
to your property and livestock, preventing the
spread of disease agents from an infected area to an uninfected area, and minimising the occurence and
transmission of microorganisms of public health significance. Biosecurity
and quarantine are vital components of any successful farming system. How
seriously you take biosecurity on your property is an individual choice, and
strict biosecurity may seem like a bit of overkill- until you introduce a
disease or infectious organism to your property and then have to deal with the
aftermath. Eradicating some infectious agents is very, very difficult.
Farm
biosecurity is about keeping your farm and all of the animals and crops on it
free from potential disease. It is the application of various systems and
practices in order to prevent the introduction of diseases, pathogens, weeds
and other pests onto your farm. It also is the implementation of systems and
practices which prevent the spread of these pathogens, weeds and pests from
your property onto other people’s property.
Biosecurity is the ongoing day to day application of a set of
simple yet essential practices designed to safeguard you lifestyle and
livelihood from potential disaster. To be effective you must be uncompromising
in the applications of the principles and practices required to ensure the
system works properly and does not fail.
Keeping diseases, pests and weeds off of your
farm and out of your business is essential because they reduce your farm
productivity and therefore your business income. These diseases and pests can
make your animals sick and in order to solve the problem you may be required to
pay costly veterinary bills or cull valuable animals and lose irreplaceable
bloodlines. Certain diseases have an added risk as they can be passed on to
humans, potentially affecting the health and wellbeing of your family and
workers. If the pests and diseases are
difficult to eradicate from the land, the value of the land may be reduced,
possibly greatly. If large numbers of farms in an area are affected by the
pathogens or pests, it can have a flow on effect to markets, domestic and
international.
Why is establishing a biosecurity
system on your farm important?
The
efficient Australian quarantine system and the fact that we live on an island
can lead some people to believe that we are relatively safe from potentially
devastating diseases and pests. While these two facts do help reduce the risk
of new pests and diseases being introduced into Australia and therefore making
their way to your farm, they are not fool proof (and there are plenty of fools
out there who ignore our quarantine rules) and we already have many devastating
and costly diseases and pests in our country.
Some of
the pathogens, pests and weeds that cost Australian farmers vast amounts of
money, time and stress are:
·
Bovine and Ovine Johne‘s Disease- a muscle wasting
disease of ruminants that is rare but endemic in Australia. There is no
treatment for this disease and affected animals either die or must be
destroyed.
·
Newcastle Disease- a highly contagious disease
affecting the digestive, respiratory and nervous systems of birds. Highly
virulent strains can cause 100% mortality. This disease is occasionally passed
on to humans.
·
Avian Influenza- a contagious disease of birds that
occurs worldwide. Severe strains cause sudden and quick deaths in birds. There
is no effective cure. It is occasionally transmitted to humans.
·
Classical Swine Fever- a highly contagious disease
of pigs last documented in Australia in 1961. The risk however is not
eliminated and an outbreak would have disasterous consequences to the
Australian Pork industry.
·
Anthrax- a disease caused by spores that may be
buried in soils for many years before coming into contact with an animal. It
can be passed to humans who come into contact with the carcass of an infected
animal. Outbreaks in Australia have only occurred in NSW.
·
Foot and Mouth Disease- is a highly contagious
disease of cloven hooved animals. It is one of the most serious livestock
diseases in the world. While Australia is considered to be FMD free, outbreaks
of this disease have occurred in Australia from 1801- 1872.
·
Intestinal parasites- cost farmers valuable dollars
in lost or slowed growth and development in affected livestock, costs to drench
animals, and the increasing risk of parasites developing resistance to drenches
·
Prickly
Pear (Opuntia stricta spp.) This
plant, introduced from the Americas sometime in the early 1800’s became a truly
unmanageable menace in NSW and Queensland between 1900 and 1930. By
1925, prickly pear was completely out of control, infesting some twenty-five million hectares in New South Wales
and Queensland. It was spreading at the rate of half a million hectares a year.
Chemical weed control failed to stop this plant’s advance and it was only with
the introduction of a biological weed control in the form of cactoblastis
caterpillars (Cactoblastis cactorum) released in 1926 that the prickly pear
problem was overcome. Within six years the weed was almost totally eradicated. (http://www.northwestweeds.nsw.gov.au/prickly_pear_history.htm)
