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Biosecurity for Visitors
© March 2001 Veserat Consulting

What is Biosecurity???? Simply put, it is a practice or practices put in place on your ranch to lower the risk of spreading a contagious disease. Just as we wash our hands before eating or leaving the bathroom, requesting a ranch visitor to wear a pair of clean, disinfected rubber boots before potentially spreading a disease such as foot and mouth, is a sound and reasonable management practice to follow.

Ranch tours, ranch visits, and regulatory inspections are part of every-day life on a ranch. Remember, a ranch visitor maybe a neighboring ranch too. To help prevent the potential spread of disease from visitors, implementing the following practices should help lower the risk of introducing a disease on to your ranch.

Visitors could be defined as anyone who maybe in contact with livestock (alive or dead), have manure on their boots or clothes, a foreign rancher, or maybe even a meter reader for the power company. The following are examples but are not limited to: cattle buyers, business contacts, nutritionists, inspectors, rendering trucks, veterinarians, feed trucks, well drillers, a backhoe or other equipment used to move manure, etc….

Have all visitors and their vehicles report to your office or specific location near the entrance to your ranch.

ALWAYS wear plastic or clean (rubber) boots when you are visiting a ranch.

When visitors come on your ranch, supply plastic disposable boots for everyone and collect the dirty boots in a garbage bag for disposal. Even supplying disposable paper coveralls will help lower the risk of spreading disease on your ranch.

Disinfect rubber boots immediately upon arrival at a ranch or use plastic disposable boots.

Disinfect rubber boots before departing a ranch or use disposable plastic boots.

Use an appropriate disinfectant such as: Environ One-Stroke® (½ ounce/gallon of water), Nolvasan® (3 ounces/gallon of water), Roccal-D Plus® (½ ounce/gallon of water or if heavily soiled then 1 ½ ounces/gallon of water), even a solution of Clorox® (1 ounce/gallon of water or higher concentrations if heavily soiled) will disinfect rubber boots. [1 ounce = 30 cc's = 2 tablespoons = 6 teaspoons]

Avoid high-risk situations such as quarantined herds, newly assembled cattle groups, or clinically (obviously) sick animals.

If you have foreign visitors, they should have avoided being around livestock in their homeland or other foreign countries for 2 weeks before visiting your ranch.

Identify what country your international visitors are from.

Avoid walking in feed alleys or feeding areas.

If possible, visit young animals first, and then adult cattle last during your ranch visit.

For additional information in California, please call California Department of Food and Agriculture, Animal Health Branch (CDFA-AHB) at (916) 654-1447 [http://www.cdfa.ca.gov] or the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal Health Inspection Services, Veterinary Services (USDA APHIS-VS) at (916) 857-6170.

Visitors should be encouraged to avoid carrying infectious agents home by removing and/or sanitizing boots at departure from the ranch. Wash clothes worn at ranch visits or ranch tours before wearing them at your home ranch. You should wash your hands and probably bathe before going back to work on your ranch.

As ranching methods become more globally shared, visitors to your ranch and your visits to other ranches become a real possibility. In the future, sanitization stations which provide disinfectant, plastic boots, and hand washing facilities, will be the first and last stop for any ranch visitor. This protects both you and your ranch whether you are the visitor or visitors are on your ranch.

Are these procedures a hassle? Sure. Are they worth it? . . . . YES! Is the slaughter of your entire herd worth the extra precautions?

Gary Veserat, PAS, and Valerie Veserat, MBA, Veserat Consulting - provide comprehensive consultation services for improved ranch management and livestock production. For more information, contact Gary or Valerie at (530) 668-4884 (telephone & fax), (916) 798-7825 (mobile), or Email - gveserat@cattlemen.net.

Biosecurity for Visitors
© March 2001 Veserat Consulting
Gary M. Veserat, PAS* & Valerie Veserat, MBA
Providing Management & Production Services
P. O. Box 2025
Woodland, CA 95776-2025 USA
(916) 798-7825 (mobile)
(530) 668-4884 (telephone & fax)
* American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists