About BIOSECURE

Coordinated by Ghent University, BIOSECURE is a forthcoming four-year project supported by the European Union with a budget of 5 million euros and 18 participating partners, from 12 European countries. Biosecurity is critical for the management of animal health and disease control however, implementation at the farm level remains often insufficient.

 Therefore, the objective of the BIOSECURE project is to enable decision makers in livestock farming to understand, prioritise and implement evidence-based, cost-effective, and sustainable biosecurity management systems. This will be carried out through various work packages and tasks that include:

 i) Reviewing the current understanding of biosecurity throughout the livestock production chain.

 ii) Quantifying the impact of biosecurity practices on the prevention of infection and spread of disease. 

 iii) Enhancing current biosecurity measures, as well as expanding on these by carrying out field studies and performing experiments. 

 iv) The socio-economic impact of the BIOSECURE project will be assessed.

v) Stakeholder engagement will be facilitated to support knowledge transfer and implementation of key exploitable results. 

The new or enhanced biosecurity management systems developed in the BIOSECURE project will help farmers of various animal species (pigs, poultry, cattle, small ruminants) and of different production types (indoor-outdoor) to keep animals healthy. Stay tuned for great research to follow. 

Objectives

1. Facilitate stakeholder engagement to support interactive knowledge exchange, behavioural change, and uptake of key exploitable results.

2. Collect existing biosecurity intelligence throughout the livestock production chain.

3. Quantify the impact of biosecurity practices on infection prevention and economics.

4. Enhancement of biosecurity measures through quantitative and qualitative field studies and experiments.

5. Assess the socio-economic impact of BIOSECURE measures beyond the farm level.