Herd health surveillance and management in an integrated HACCP based system

Summary

Future herd health management systems need to focus on precaution and documentation of how product and process failures are prevented. HACCP-based herd health surveillance schemes have been developed for dairy cattle herds, organic pig and egg production systems and for mink
production in Denmark. The generic part of such systems, including definition of hazards and risk factors, can be developed through expert opinion panels. The development of sets of control points, alarm values and corrective actions need typically to be farm specific. On-farm systems focusing on broad topics such as animal welfare and food safety tend to grow too big to be operational. It is suggested that a part of the system is controlled through ‘good management practice’ leaving only a few hazards to be controlled by control points, alarm values and corrective actions.