Biosecurity refers to procedures that prevent diseases from getting onto a farm, spreading within the farm, and travelling to another location. Preventing disease and illness is critical to animal care and helping ensure good animal welfare, as well as to human health.
Disease-causing organisms can be introduced or transmitted to turkeys in a variety of ways, including predators, rodents, flies, insects, wild birds, dust, feathers, manure, water and air, as well as humans’ clothing and footwear. All litter, feed, even the baby poults… anything going into the barn has to come from a supplier that also follows Canadian regulations to ensure nothing that comes into the barn is contaminated.
Turkey farms are required to have high levels of biosecurity because of birds’ susceptibility to disease and farmers take this responsibility very seriously.