BIOSECURITY ▶▶▶


Visitors from a post-secondary institution in Canada wear protective cloth- ing and shoe covers while touring a dairy farm to learn about proAction.


movement of animals and authorised visitors entering a farm,” says Wiens, “to preventative protocols for vaccinations, appropriate protection such as clean boots or boot covers for guests, biosecurity signage and clear records of diseases on the farm.” How best to handle visitors to the farm in ways that ensure biosecurity is protected was foreseen as a particular chal- lenge of this module’s implementation. Wiens notes that dairy farmers are “very proud of what they do and want to re- main open and accessible to visitors” and that how to handle visitors presented “a delicate balancing act” in module devel- opment. In the end, DFC notes that each farmer has to work with his or her veterinarian to determine the right ways forward.


Farmer perspective Handling visitors was indeed a tough conundrum for Dave Taylor, a British Columbia dairy farmer who served on the technical subcommittee for development of the biosecurity module. With his wife, Lisa, and other family members, Taylor produces milk and breeds Holsteins at their Viewfield Farm on Vancouver Island. Viewfield has won the top provincial hon- our for milk quality, and Dave and Lisa are also winners of the prestigious Canadian Outstanding Young Farmers’ Award. Like any dairy farm, Viewfield receives a fair amount of traffic, and Taylor explains that “like visitors to any other farm, they have no set times when they arrive. I think that those who travel from farm to farm are the ones that we watch to make


10 ▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 7, No. 2, 2020


sure that they are being careful in regard to biosecurity, and that there are boundaries to where they should go on our farm. We also have multiple entry points to our farm, which also can be a real challenge.” Adding to normal industry traffic are community members who walk onto parts of the farm in order to access recreation- al fishing on the adjacent land. “Most stick to a roadway,” says Taylor, “and are respectful of signs and our communication about having dogs on a leash if they are on our property.” As to the requirements of the entire biosecurity module, Tay- lor notes that while they were almost all already being met on his farm, they mostly were not being met in the way the module has them laid out. Adjustments therefore had to be made, and Taylor observes that “changes like this can be frus- trating, as it means re-training all individuals working on the farm.” Some of the changes the Taylors made included additional signage with contact names and numbers, more detailed re- porting on the health of each cow, and creating written SOPs for all vaccinations, for new cattle entering the herd and for cattle returning back to the herd. They also now do more to get health information for each new cow, which isn’t always easy. However, through it all, they had the support of their veterinarian, various proAction co-ordinators and their pro- vincial dairy association. There are other things that Taylor and his family did not have to change, as well as some other biosecurity-related items that they’ve chosen not to change at this point. “We still


PHOTO: DAIRY FARMERS OF CANADA


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