What are the risks and what is best practice? Farm Biosecurity examines the key biosecurity risk areas.

In this issue, we look at people movement as a risk area and the particular role it has had to play in the spread of equine influenza (EI).

With proven cases of EI being carried between properties by people - on boots, clothing and vehicles - the reality of how easily livestock disease can spread has hit home.

When EI was confirmed in Australia in August 2007, a nationwide ban on movement of horses and their equipment was declared.

The ban contained the spread of the highly contagious disease to QLD and NSW. However despite the controls EI continued to spread within NSW and QLD.

The culprits? – not horses, but PEOPLE.  in many instances, people inadvertently spread the disease as they came into contact with infected horses then carried the virus to other horses.

The disease is so contagious that contact with an infected animal or contaminated clothing or equipment is enough to pick it up. The virus is hardy enough to survive for a time on unwashed hands, clothes, hair and even in the nasal passages, and then be passed to a horse in a new location, where it reestablishes itself, continuing the spread. EI can also be driven even longer distances, on unwashed vehicles and contaminated equipment, to pop up in previously free areas.

Equine influenza is a highly contagious disease that can survive outside the host – but it is not the only one. Some equally contagious diseases can survive even longer in the natural environment – and bad as the consequences of the EI outbreak were, these other diseases could be worse.

Prevention is simply about implementing biosecurity measures as a matter of daily practice, so that if you come into contact with EI or anything else, you won’t take it home to your animals.

People movement – farm biosecurity tips:

• Wash your hands before and after contact with stock
• Consider boots, shoes, work clothes and assess whether they need to be cleaned and disinfected
• Check that equipment to be used with your stock is clean and disinfected
• Minimise contact with other people’s stock
• Prevent unnecessary visitor contact with your stock
• Do not allow people onto your property without permission
• Keep an up-to-date visitor log – to aid tracing in the event of an outbreak
• As vehicles are hard to clean, park them away from sheds, paddocks or areas used by animals

If you spot unexpected or unusual signs of disease, abnormal behaviour or unexpected deaths in your stock, call your vet or the Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline on 1800 675 888.

The impact on the horse industries, and the many businesses that support them, has been devastating. Good biosecurity will minimise this kind of impact if another disease outbreak should occur.