Intervention to Improve Biosecurity System of Poultry Production Clusters (PPCs) in Thailand

In 2004–2005, outbreaks of avian influenza were reported in eight countries in the Southeast and Eastern Asian regions, namely, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. The resulting damages were a tremendous blow to the poultry production sector [1]. Additional damages had far-reaching economic, environmental and public health implications in the region. Generally, poultry farms with weak biosecurity systems were susceptible to outbreaks [2,3,4,5,6]. In 2006, there was an avian influenza outbreak in Nakhon Phanom province in the northeastern region of Thailand adjacent to Laos with the Mekong River serving as a natural border. Characteristically, the farmers in this province raise layer chickens in lift housing; the number of houses in each farm is about 3–10, which are located in the same area. The distance between farms is 50 m on average. At the time of the outbreak, the Department of Livestock Development, which oversees livestock issues in Thailand, asked the Nakhon Phanom Livestock Development officials to destroy all of the chicken eggs belonging to the layer chicken clusters in compliance with the policy for disease prevention and control. Next, the province and provincial livestock development officials visited the farms to offer assistance in establishing clusters in the form of cooperatives to develop poultry farming and biosecurity systems on the farms [7]. Nevertheless, the government’s policy for poultry destruction damaged the relationships between the livestock development officials and the poultry farmers. Hence, poultry farming and disease control on the farms following the avian influenza outbreak was not as good as it should have been in the clusters. Although every farm practiced control, the farms need to develop good agricultural practice (GAP) standardized farming systems, as set forth by the Department of Livestock Development; this was stated by Wei and Aengwanich [8], who evaluated the level of biosecurity systems layer farms in poultry production clusters in Nakhon Phanom province in 2012. According to the findings, the biosecurity systems on the egg farms in the poultry production clusters in Nakhon Phanom province were low because there were numerous trees on the farms surrounding the poultry production clusters and water sources composed of large ponds spread out everywhere that attracted wild and migratory birds in large numbers (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

In addition, practice in line with biosecurity systems on the farms is not as stringent as it should be due to the investments involved in biosecurity systems which incur huge costs for improvement, as some farmers are not ready to invest. Therefore, the objective of this study was to use various measures to stimulate farmers of PPCs in Nakhon Phanom to improve biosecurity levels on their farms. The results from this study will provide data for policy makers, officers and researchers who work in this field both currently and in the future.

The results for a comparison of biosecurity level in poultry farms before and after intervention are shown in Table 1.

As seen in Table 1, there are differences between the before and after intervention scores for two indicators, namely, attraction of wild birds and biosecurity system planning inside farms (Farmers have a plan for development biosecurity system in their farm according with Department of Livestock Development (DLD) standard). The increased scores for attraction of wild birds were caused by certain farmers who cut down trees surrounding the farms which were a local source or attraction for wild birds. The aforementioned wild birds could be vectors for avian influenza. However, most of the trees were left uncut because the trees surrounding the farms were local fruit trees generating income for the farmers. Concerning the indicator on biosecurity system planning inside farms, the findings indicated increased scores following the intervention and some of the farmers had already invested in farm development. With regard to the eleven other indicators, there were slight changes between the before and after intervention scores because the Nakhon Phanom Livestock Development Office had published standards for disease control following the outbreak of avian influenza in 2006 by stipulating that new poultry farmers were required to build and develop farms meeting GAP standards in order to be granted poultry production licenses on layer farms. Hence, all of the farm types in these poultry production clusters were similar. Therefore, when the evaluations were performed using the aforementioned form, the results yielded by the evaluation were not different. Concerning the index scores for all of the indictors evaluated, the lowest score was zero points and the highest score was three points. According to the findings, eight of the indicators had scores between 0 and 1, thereby indicating that the layer farms in the PPCs in Nakhon Phanom province were at risk of outbreaks of avian influenza.

This research study has already been approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Maha Sarakham University. The intervention was conducted from July to October 2013 and plans for the intervention were made by employing a model called “Thailand’s Model” in the work process; this was achieved by working together with Nakhon Phanom Livestock Development officials who have a duty directly involving the promotion and support of poultry farming in the aforementioned group. The work process was carried out through the joint activities of the Provincial Livestock Development officials and the farmers. The researchers facilitated the activities, arranged meetings and served as a source of academic information for the activities used in the intervention as follows: Meetings to build understanding about the work and hearing of ideas and problems among the stakeholders; providing instruction about biosecurity systems and displaying the good results yielded by the aforementioned systems on the health of the poultry and increased income as fewer sick animals will increase the farmers’ income whilst reducing expenditure for disease prevention and control, which will yield good results for farmers; having the farmers evaluate biosecurity levels on their own farms to enable them to acknowledge the situations of the biosecurity systems on the farms to give them the opportunity to realize the errors on each farm; and initiating measures to motivate the farmers, such as farming contests for farms with high level biosecurity systems, and granting awards. In addition, once the systems had been developed, the farms were managed to meet the Department of Livestock Development’s GAP standards and the farms were accredited and received certificates. For the before and after intervention processes, the biosecurity levels of the farms in this poultry product cluster were evaluated using the biosecurity system evaluation form developed by Wei and Aengwanich [8] (Table 2). Next, the before and after intervention biosecurity data were compared by using t-test by using SPSS. Results of the analysis are presented in the form of Mean ± SD.

The biosecurity system of poultry production cluster in Nakhon Phanom province showed improvements for two indicators, namely, attraction of wild birds and biosecurity system planning inside farms when compared between before and after intervention. The interventions were made by employing a model called “Thailand’s Model” in the work process by working together with Nakhon Phanom Livestock Development officials and the farmers. The changes were made by the stakeholder with researchers working as facilitators for change.