Misure di biosicurezza in allevamenti avicoli: stato dell’arte e criticità secondo una prospettiva italiana

The burden of infectious diseases is every time present and it is a risk that cannot be taken in intensive livestock farming. At the present time, biosecurity is the most powerful prevention tool to face this issue, thus its proper implementation at local, regional, national and international level should be properly addressed. Biosecurity appears to be a well-known concept but not always implemented, which compliance is hard to assess, and which information are lacking. Therefore the purposes of the present thesis were to (i) investigate the implementation level of biosecurity measures (BMs) and the perception on their implementation from the main poultry stakeholders from the most densely populated poultry area (DPPA) in Italy, consequently enhancing their compliance by collecting, selecting, testing and sharing the best supporting measures (SMs) (Part 1), (ii) highlighting biosecurity beneficial role in poultry production at national and international level (Part 2) and (iii) identifying the most relevant gaps to pave the way for further biosecurity improvements (Part 1-3). Within this thesis we found an overall good level of implementation (Chapter 2), suggesting that the biosecurity system is properly designed. However, through a deeper investigation, we found that the overall good level is made up of different biosecurity perceptions, usually higher in advisors than in farmers (Chapter 3). Perception gaps among stakeholders were addressed through validation of dedicated supporting measures towards the farmer (Chapter 4). The beneficial role of biosecurity implementation was deepened by using BMs to predict both risk and protective factors towards farm AMU via statistical models (Chapter 5) and to systematically investigate their role in control or prevention of colibacillosis in broiler (Chapter 6). Finally, availability of biosecurity data was investigated at both Italian and European level, depicting a lacking of data scenario. The population target of this thesis was poultry, slightly changing according to each chapter: enclosed broilers, turkeys and layers (Chapter 2), broilers and layers (enclosed and free range), turkeys, ducks, breeders (Chapter 3,4), enclosed broilers and turkeys (Chapter 5), broilers (Chapter 6). The structure of the thesis is as follows: introduction (Chapter 1), three main parts made up of research articles either published, in press or in preparation (Part 1, Chapters 2-4; Part 2, Chapters 5,6; Part 3, Chapter 7), general conclusion (Chapter 8), additional information, acknowledgements, and literature cited.