By Jack Hughes, Biosecurity Team Manager, Livetec
During our recent Biosecurity Masterclass, we were discussing one of the perennial challenges around biosecurity: how do you keep people engaged with measures that have to be carried out consistently, every day?
It led me to make a slightly wider point.
As an industry, we understand that feed and water are fundamental to production. We measure them. We monitor performance. We invest in improvements because we understand the impact they can have on the birds and the productivity of the farm.
But where does biosecurity sit in that conversation?
We know it costs money. Disinfectant, PPE, infrastructure, pest control, training and people's time all have a cost attached to them.
What is much harder to quantify is the value created by doing biosecurity well.
The difficulty of putting a value on prevention
This isn't a new question.
A Finnish study published in Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica in 2012 specifically examined the cost of preventive biosecurity on poultry farms.
Looking at 17 broiler producers and five hatching-egg producers, the researchers estimated average preventive biosecurity costs for broiler production at 3.55 euro cents per bird. For a batch of 75,000 broilers, that equated to approximately €2,700.
But arguably the most interesting point comes in the study's conclusion.
Having established what preventive biosecurity was costing producers, the researchers identified the next challenge as linking those costs to the benefits being gained.
More than a decade later, that's a challenge I think we still recognise.
Looking beyond the cost
There is, however, research beginning to give us a better picture of the relationship between preventative health measures and farm performance.
A 2019 study published in Poultry Science examined the technical and economic impact of tailored veterinary interventions intended to reduce antimicrobial use across 20 broiler farms.
The researchers compared historical farm performance with performance following the interventions. Antimicrobial use and feed conversion decreased, while the study reported that economic performance following the interventions was generally higher than before them.
It's important not to overstate what that tells us. These were farm-specific veterinary interventions aimed at reducing antimicrobial use, rather than a controlled calculation of the financial return from biosecurity alone.
But it does demonstrate why the wider relationship between prevention, health, technical performance and economic performance deserves more attention.
Not every farm needs the same investment
Another European study, published in Epidemiology & Infection, looked at biosecurity and antimicrobial use on 181 broiler farms across nine European countries.
Rather than asking whether simply spending more on biosecurity produced a better outcome, the researchers looked at individual farm weaknesses and modelled combinations of measures that could potentially reduce antimicrobial use. They also considered the estimated cost-effectiveness of those interventions.
The important principle for me is the farm-specific nature of that approach.
Good biosecurity isn't about throwing more money at the problem.
It's about understanding where your vulnerabilities actually are and deciding where your time, effort and investment can have the greatest effect.
That's something we talk about frequently when we're on farm. What works for one site won't necessarily be right for another. Layout, production type, people, surrounding disease pressure and existing controls all influence risk.
Perhaps we need to start with measurement, not ROI
I'd love to be able to tell a producer that every £1 invested in biosecurity will return £X.
At the moment, I don't think the evidence allows us to make that claim credibly.
Perhaps we're asking the question in the wrong order.
Before we can get better at understanding financial return, we need to get better at establishing where we are today, what we're changing and whether that change has made a difference.
That's one of the reasons I believe establishing a biosecurity baseline is so important.
If we can identify our strengths and weaknesses, prioritise an intervention and then reassess, we start building evidence about whether what we're doing is actually improving our position.
Over time, there is an opportunity to consider that information alongside other measures of flock health and farm performance.
That doesn't immediately give us a neat ROI figure. But it moves biosecurity away from being something we simply spend money on and towards something we can increasingly measure, evaluate and improve.
Biosecurity is part of production
Ultimately, that's the change in thinking I'd like to see.
Biosecurity shouldn't only become a priority when disease pressure increases. Nor should it exist simply as a list of requirements that have to be completed for an audit.
It's part of running a productive poultry operation.
If we recognise the value of getting feed, water, welfare and bird management right, we should be asking more questions about the contribution good biosecurity makes too.
We might not yet be able to put a definitive financial return against it.
But as an industry, we can get much better at understanding its value.
And better measurement might be where that starts.
Reference sources & further reading:
The Finnish research is Siekkinen et al., Measuring the costs of biosecurity on poultry farms: a case study in broiler production in Finland, Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica (2012). The authors explicitly conclude that the next challenge is linking preventive biosecurity costs with the benefits obtained. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3349596/
Roskam et al., The technical and economic impact of veterinary interventions aimed at reducing antimicrobial use on broiler farms, Poultry Science (2019). It studied 20 broiler farms and found economic performance after the tailored interventions was generally higher, while importantly also reporting mixed technical effects — including increased mortality and average daily gain, alongside reduced feed conversion and antimicrobial use. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119579743
Mallioris et al., Biosecurity and antimicrobial use in broiler farms across nine European countries: toward identifying farm-specific options for reducing antimicrobial usage, Epidemiology & Infection. This used data from 181 farms across nine European countries and developed farm-specific intervention scenarios including estimated costs/cost-effectiveness. The authors also explicitly caution that the sample wasn't representative of broiler production in each individual country, which is another limitation worth respecting. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9990406/
