YOUR LEVY AT WORK
ON-FARM BIOSECURITY SERIES: PEOPLE Words by Anna Rathé : HortNZ biosecurity manager
People come and go regularly from horticultural farms and orchards and have likely visited a range of different places before arriving at your operation. Precautionary actions can be taken to minimise any biosecurity risk associated with people coming onto your property. The movement of people and the actions required of them should be included in your on-farm biosecurity plan. Contact your industry body to see if they have a cropspecific template that you can use. If not, you can use the HortNZ template that is available online. Some of the common risk areas associated with people are explored below, along with risk reduction actions for you to consider.
SOME OF THE COMMON RISK AREAS ASSOCIATED WITH PEOPLE INCLUDE CLOTHING, KNOWLEDGE, TRAINING, AND REPORTING
10 NZGROWER : OCTOBER 2021
Staff and visitors Consider who visits your property – likely a wide range of people such as staff, suppliers, advisors, crop scouts, contractors, transport providers, guests and possibly also people living on the property. Anyone coming onto your property can inadvertently carry pests, pathogens or weed seeds with them on their clothing, footwear, vehicles or even skin. Consider the risk posed by each visitor before you decide whether to let them onto your site or not – ask them what type of properties they have recently been on and whether they can provide assurance that their clothing, hands, shoes, vehicles and equipment are clean. Provide cleaning facilities, including footbaths containing an appropriate sanitising product to prevent the spread of pathogens that may be on footwear. You may also wish to provide clean clothing and footwear for visitor use on site. It’s useful to limit access and parking to a single point on your property so people’s movements are contained to one part of the site. Limit visitor access to crops and production areas unless essential. Be sure to keep a visitor log so that you have a record of who has been on the property. This is invaluable if a biosecurity event occurs and forwards or backwards tracing is required.
