SES Offers Support to Industry for HPAI

Supply Chain Resiliency: Biosecurity and Disease Mitigation for the Poultry & Egg Industry

SES, Inc. (SES) has been providing support services to all facets of agriculture, both securing production systems and facilitating agricultural system resiliency, for more than a decade.  These services span a broad spectrum of services for Federal, state, local, and industry clients, including:

• Developing and implementing animal production-based environmental and biosecurity plans and programs, including guidance, monitoring and verification
• Designing and conducting exercises associated with outbreaks of foreign animal diseases (FAD), including highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI)
• Developing of standard operating procedures (SOP) to mitigate and respond to agriculture threats
• Developing and implementing producer outreach and training

A few examples of SES’s agricultural clients include:

• Large and small-scale poultry and livestock producers (vertically integrated production to individual production operations)
• Feed, slaughter and processing operations
• National- and local-level agricultural trade organizations
• Federal, state and local governmental agencies
• The Multi-State Partnership for Security in Agriculture
• Iowa State University Center for Food Security and Public Health

This experience has made SES American agriculture’s premier, public/private-sector source for technical support in agricultural disease preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.  Specifically, SES understands that the key to limiting the impacts of an outbreak of a poultry disease is through strict, on-farm and on-processing plant biosecurity protocols and procedures.  Essential to the effectiveness of these protocols and procedures is education, monitoring and verification.  SES has the experience and expertise to assist industry with all or any part of this comprehensive system of protocols, procedures, education monitoring and/or verification.  We understand that it is imperative to ensure production returns as soon as possible following an outbreak, and that a company Brand is protected.  The recent spread of HPAI has identified challenges in long-standing biosecurity measures and implementation practices, representing a significant risk to individual producers, integrators, and the entire poultry/egg supply chain.  The losses of both egg and meat bird production have begun to impact supply chain resiliency and access to international markets, potentially causing a shift in marketplace utilization of poultry and egg products.

 SES staff are the leaders in the field of food and agricultural defense and security.  Through numerous programs and projects, SES staff have developed an intimate understanding of poultry (layer and meat bird) systems and their vulnerabilities to introduction of FADs, including HPAI.  Our staff is trained in the Incident Command System (ICS) and have been involved in numerous exercises, planning activities and responses to manmade and natural disasters and outbreaks of FADs in the United States and around the world.

Services

• Risk mitigation through program development and implementation
• Disease mitigation system development
• Site/complex-specific biosecurity planning, monitoring and verification
• On-farm/complex-wide biosecurity reviews, announced or unannounced
• Producer outreach and education
• Supply chain risk assessment (resiliency assessment)
• Disease watch (24/7 monitoring of domestic and international disease events)
• Contingency Planning (How to properly respond during a FAD outbreak)
• Response liaison to assist producers or companies in their interactions with the responding agencies
• Recovery assistance

To engage the services of SES, and to discuss the possible impacts of biosecurity on supply chain resiliency, please contact Mr. Frank Bryant at 913-307-0046, extension 12.