Biosecurity Measures Applied in the United Arab Emirates - a Comparative Study Between Livestock and Wildlife Sectors

Abstract

In 2013, the livestock population in the UAE exceeded 4.3 million heads with sheep and goats accounting for 90% of this. The overall number of captive wild ungulates (gazelle types) is difficult to assess as there is no registration system in place or enforced in the UAE with regard to the possession of wildlife. Those animal collections, mainly owned by high-ranking families, are therefore not registered and kept far from public viewing. Nonetheless, some collections are housing more than 30 000 ungulates in one location. The primary objective of this study was to describe the biosecurity measures currently applied in UAE ungulate facilities for different wildlife and livestock sectors. A secondary objective was to use the output from this biosecurity survey to investigate which sector could be categorized into risk groups for disease introduction and spread. Between October 2014 and May 2015, biosecurity questionnaire data were collected in the Emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujeirah, Ajman, Umm al Quwain and Sharjah from 14 wildlife collections, 30 livestock farms and 15 mixed (wildlife and livestock farms). These investigations through questionnaires allowed us to quantify and assess statistically biosecurity practices and levels for both livestock and wildlife sectors. In both sectors, biosecurity measures could be improved and only a few facilities had high biosecurity scores. The group of small unregistered farms (Ezba) represented the highest risk of disease transmission to other animals due to their lack of biosecurity awareness.

Spatio-temporal patterns of foot-and-mouth disease transmission in cattle between 2007 and 2015 and quantitative assessment of the economic impact of the disease in Niger

“…For each node in a CART generated tree, the “primary splitter” is the variable that best splits the node, maximizing the purity of the resulting nodes. Further details about CART are presented in previously published articles (e.g., Chaber & Saegerman, ; Saegerman, Alba‐Casals, Garcia‐Bocanegra, Dal Pozzo, & van Galen, ; Saegerman, Porter, & Humblet, ; Saegerman, Speybroeck, Dal, & Czaplicki, ).…”

Risk and protective indicators of beekeeping management practices

“…The Gini index was used as the splitting method, and 10-fold crossvalidation was used to test the predictive capacity of the obtained trees. SPM performs cross validation by growing maximal classification trees on subsets of data then calculating error rates based on unused portions of the data set (Chaber and Saegerman, 2017). To accomplish this, SPM divides the data set into 10 randomly selected and roughly equal parts, with each 'part' containing a similar distribution of data from the populations of interest (i.e.…”

Foot‐and‐mouth disease outbreaks in captive scimitar‐horned oryx ( Oryx dammah )

“…This animal collection was located inland in close proximity to an intercity highway and a truck road, 45 km east of Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and more than 100 km from the borders with neighbouring countries. A separate complex with hundreds of 'ezbas', the local traditional farms (Chaber & Saegerman, 2017) Animals displaying only deciduous teeth were considered as juveniles, while those with one or two pairs of adult incisors were categorized as subadults and three or four pairs were defined as adults.…”

“…How these different FMD viruses entered and spread unnotified on at least three occasions remains unanswered. The importance of contributing factors that might help explain these patterns is not well understood, such as the presence of large numbers of small ruminants, known to harbour and spread FMDV with mild to inapparent clinical signs (Geering, 1967;Hughes et al, 2002;Stenfeldt et al, 2015) as well as connections to numerous traditional farms in the region, possibly with poor biosecurity (Chaber & Saegerman, 2017) and inadequate FMD vaccination coverage. In light of these gaps, we recommend that efforts are made to identify and quantify the risk factors for FMD importation to, and transmission within the UAE.…”

“…This animal collection was located inland in close proximity to an intercity highway and a truck road, 45 km east of Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and more than 100 km from the borders with neighbouring countries. A separate complex with hundreds of ‘ezbas’, the local traditional farms (Chaber & Saegerman, ) was situated 3,900 m to the east. The facility measured over 6,000 m long by 750 m wide.…”