Secure Turkey Supply Plan-enhancing Food System Protection through Public-private Partnerships

Introduction: One of the keys to food system protection is to mitigate the risks and vulnerabilities to a given food system in the face of an adverse event. The Secure Turkey Supply Plan (STS) is meant to reduce the unintended consequences that a standard response to an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), involving quarantine and stop movement orders, would have on the turkey industry.

Purpose: Through collaboration, form accurate risk- and science-based plans and guidelines to inform risk management decisions associated with a HPAI outbreak.  

Methods: A public-private partnership approach is utilized to enhance the data collection and accuracy ensuring that all recommendations within the STS are feasible for the food system and reasonable within the regulators' judgment. The working group partnership includes representatives from government, industry and academia. 

Results: Normal daily mortality data collected from 74 turkey houses showed an industry representative number of 3 dead birds per 1,000 in a house per day for meat turkeys (3/1,000). The original protocols called for increased surveillance and restrictions if the daily mortality in a house was above 2/1,000. At the rate of 2/1,000, there is a predicted rRT-PCR false positive rate of 4.9%. Over a two week period, a farm with 3 houses has an 89% chance of at least 1 false positive test. At a rate of 3/1,000 the false positive rate is 1.1%. Other enhancements to the STS include the biosecurity recommendation of a pre-movement isolation period of 5 days before movement of meat turkeys.

Significance: The pro-active risk assessment work has resulted in science based and industry viable recommendations to the STS in both biosecurity and flock health monitoring. These ensure infected but undetected commodity and live bird movements do not perpetuate the spread of HPAI and increase the impact of an outbreak.