Assessment of biosecurity

Biosecurity practices applied in the herds were evaluated using the online tool BioCheck (available at www.biocheck.ugent.be) developed by Laanen et al. 2010 [19] and modified for MINAPIG. In brief, BioCheck consists of 109 questions relating to biosecurity measures, grouped into 6 subcategories of each of external and internal biosecurity measures. Examples of external biosecurity measures are “Purchase of animals and semen” and “Transport of animals and removal of manure and dead animals”, and of internal biosecurity measures “Disease management”, “Biosecurity measures between compartments and the use of equipment” and “Cleaning and disinfection”. The score for each subcategory accounts for its estimated importance for the introduction and spread of infectious diseases, with scores ranging between 0, corresponding to “total absence of biosecurity” and 100, corresponding to “perfect biosecurity”.