What is meant by "Biosecurity" and why is it important to our farmers and ranchers?
Biosecurity is the measures that are taken to prevent the spread of diseases, viruses, and harmful organisms in order to minimize the risk of harmful illnesses. The risk of harmful illnesses effect the plants and/or animals which cause food to be discarded. Today, when we went to the Pontotoc Experiment Station, which focuses mostly on the production of sweet potatoes, Dr. Lorin Harvey explained some of their precautionary measures they take to decrease the spread of pests and diseases. One example of biosecurity they use is they never enter the laboratory after they are out in the field or in the greenhouse with the crops. This is to make sure that they don’t bring any potential diseases from outside into the laboratory with all of the young potato plants. They also have precautionary measures they take even entering the greenhouse. They have two doors that leads access to the greenhouse, but only one is opened at a time to prevent any pests that could potentially get in the greenhouse and transmit viruses to the sweet potatoes.
Another example of implementation biosecurity was the dairy we stopped at on the first day. Full Circle Dairy asked us not to interact with any of the cows or calves while we are there. Any one of us could potentially carry stuff from the animals we work with at home and from even traveling to the other places we visited that day that could be transmitted.
Farmers implement these precautions to not only limit the amount of pests and disease on their own farm, but to prevent those potential pests and diseases from leaving their farm and contaminating other farms.
-Abby, Kieran, Andrew
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