Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This review addresses two primary concerns: the current biosecurity practices on small-scale agricultural operations (farms), and the typical biosecurity resource content types among small-scale agricultural operations.There is certain research value, but it seems like less of scientific contribution. The following problems need to be addressed:

General comments：

1. The formatting of the article is confusing, each paragraph of the article needs to be aligned at both ends, and L57, L90, and L344 do not require first line indentation.

2. The structure of 3.2 section is confusing, and it is recommended that the logical structure be reorganized.

3. The conclusion is too long.

4. The format of references need to be double checked.

Specific comments:

1. Specific values for the proportion of mortality rates need to be supplemented in L219-L220, as well as the proportion of farmers requiring biosafety training for L221-L224.

2. L287-L289 Implementation of effective biosecurity measures will result in a 9.70% decrease in total annual profit for ranches, and is there data available to show the change in total profit after implementation of effective biosecurity measures for large and small ranches, respectively?

 

Author Response

Please see attached document. Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The title of the article is misleading, because the vast majority of research on improving biosecurity in smallholder farming operations refers to lower and middle income countries, where smallholder farming predominates. The sector is immensely diverse, but in general resources are limited and subsistence farming is the norm. The title should clearly state that the study applies to the USA, although occasional examples from other countries are included.  

The manuscript is difficult to read because it is disjointed and seems to jump about without focusing on a logical progression of ideas. This might be because the Results and Discussion are merged, or because there is no specific focus on particular aspects of biosecurity. There is a good deal of repetition that needs to be eliminated. Subheadings are used but the text does not always reflect what the subheading states. The text is not well organized so that the impression is a ramble through the literature that does not provide a clear picture of biosecurity or lack of it on small scale farms in the USA.

The conclusion is fairly clear, and a good start for the authors would be to work through the text and make sure that it does support the conclusions, largely by being clearer about the actual biosecurity situation on small-scale farms in the USA. As the manuscript stands, it does not add very much to our knowledge about biosecurity on small-scale USA farms, perhaps because it is a literature review and not a field study, but if it is reworked to address what the conclusion states that it does, this will be greatly improved. 

Under Materials and Methods, the geographic scope of the literature searches should be defined, as well as inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of the databases mentioned, only Google Scholar would be likely to yield references to research undertaken in other regions, and one has to assume that anything referring to such regions were purposefully excluded as not being relevant to the study.

A number of specific issues ranging from minor edits to important changes are listed below.

Line 32: Insert “more” after adhere.

Line 92: Should “adapt” not be “adopt”?

Lins 103-105: This sentence gives the distinct impression that biosecurity causes disease, while I am sure that what is meant is that biosecurity contributes to preventing disease-causing operational practices. It needs to be restructured accordingly. Inserting “preventing” before disease-causing infections would solve the problem, provided that the authors are not redefining biosecurity as operational practices that cause disease!

Line 108: Viruses are pathogens, so “pathogens and viruses” does not make sense.

Lines 108-110: The sentence is incomplete. Dropping “which” in line 108 would solve the problem unless something further like “provides standards…” was supposed to be added.

Lines 135-145: The entire paragraph provides a series of non sequiturs, i.e. concepts that are not related to each other. The first line refers to modern farming as a contributor to disease emergence, but the rest of the paragraph seems to apply to small scale farming in rural settings. It also raises flags about threats from local pathogens due to locally sourced products, but these are probably a lot safer than soya products sourced from China! What is said in the first sentence does not really do what the second sentence says it does, because if anything modern farming requires less contact between humans and their livestock, and unless it is explained that expanding human populations are encroaching on wildlife habitats, the chance of “intensification” of density of human populations or modern farming resulting in closer wildlife contact is remote. The last sentence is obscure, bringing in healthcare settings and providing the example of Lassa fever, which is a rodent-associated disease that occurs in some parts of Africa.

Lines 152-153: This really doesn’t make sense. What is it about human and livestock health that is essential to identifying interventions to reduce pathogen emergence? It is certainly essential for human and livestock health to be able to identify interventions to reduce pathogen emergence, but human and livestock health themselves are not tools for identification of such interventions, how could they be?

Line 155: Remove “globally”, as the coverage of the available literature on the topic is anything but global, and a great many studies in Africa have had this focus.

Section 3.2: The heading states “Small-scale production practices of biosecurity”, but the first sentence reflects biosecurity practices that are applicable to large-scale commercial farms. I am admittedly not sure about small-scale farming in USA, but even in Europe it has been noted that biosecurity measures at that level are not practiced on small-scale farms, and if made mandatory, as happened in Latvia in response to the introduction of African swine fever, most of the small-scale producers simply went out of business and disappeared, because they were not able to comply with those measures. Either change the heading or make the paragraph fit the heading. Furthermore, the first sentence states that these measures are commonly employed on both large and small scale farming operations, whereas the rest of the paragraph suggests (I am sure correctly) that this is not the case.

Lines 177-185: This paragraph seems to contradict itself (it is difficult to decide whether small-scale farms are more risky or less risky). The last sentence again doesn’t make very much sense since the rest of the paragraph does not mention policy or resource allocation.

Line 187-190: This sentence should be omitted, as it represents incorrect citation of a reference that incorrectly cited another reference. The Holloway (2019) reference states that “In South Africa, for instance, smallholder farmers were blamed for outbreaks of diseases in pigs (Mather and Marshall, 2011)…”. In fact, Mather & Marshall do not use the word “blamed” at all, their article refers to a single outbreak of classical swine fever in pigs including those of smallholder farmers in South Africa, and they were critical of the drastic measures taken by the authorities to eradicate the disease. However, they never suggested that either swill feeding in the peri-urban areas or free-ranging in the rural areas constituted good biosecurity on the part of the smallholder farmers, although recognizing that few other feasible options existed for them. Unfortunately Holloway took something that was not there out of context and the authors have cited him, practically verbatim but with an unfounded addition of their own, without checking the original reference, which is not good scientific practice.

Lines 208-210: Willingness to enforce strict biosecurity practices on the part of who? Where legislation for biosecurity practices exists it would be enforced by government; on larger farms employing workers the farmer or manager might enforce biosecurity practices, but what the impact of either would be on small-scale farms is unclear. The sentence needs to be restructured to enable the reader to understand what the authors are trying to convey.

Lines 233-234: The sentence is again unclear – was there a positive correlation between revenue and (1) the presence of pests in the holding areas and (2) quarantining procedures for new animals, or as it would appear, the presence of pests in both the holding areas and the quarantining procedures, which would be difficult to imagine?

Line 257: Do the authors really believe that “biological knowledge and technologies pose a threat to public health”? Surely lack of them would pose that threat and might also negatively impact farming. The entire sentence needs to be reconsidered or discarded, as the impression is that the authors are regurgitating something that was not well understood.

Table 1: Surely the authors should be referring to Statutes, and not Statues? In the accompanying paragraph “statutes’ is correct in the first line, but then “statues” appear several times in the subsequent text.

Lines 278-291: The geographic areas to which the examples of the cost of outbreaks should be mentioned, as this will vary enormously amongst regions due to different values of the animals at risk and the value of trade. While the BSE outbreak occurred in the USA, Fasina et al (2012) report on a study in Nigeria; an outbreak of African swine fever in the USA would result in vastly greater financial losses, for obvious reasons. It can be presumed that the World Bank estimates refer to losses at global level.

Line 280: Should read “A report…”.

Lines 292-296 and line 342: I am not sure what is meant by “false positive biosecurity reports”? Do the authors mean false positive disease occurrence reports? Because to me false positive biosecurity reports would mean reports suggesting that biosecurity was better than it actually was.

Lines 318-319: Surely what is meant is private and public sectors, the public sector being the government? There can be no such thing as a private government.

Line 330: Replace “focuses” with “focus”.

I have not gone through the references in detail but noticed that the reference that should follow 47 (Fasina et al) has run into 47 and rectifying this will change the numbering from that point on.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some of the language usage is peculiar, and this has been detailed in my comments to the authors on the manuscript. Sometimes it seems as if biosecurity and disease are being confused with one another!

Author Response

Please see attached document. Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript reads much better and the focus is very much clearer, the authors have done a great job of addressing my concerns thoughtfully and thoroughly, as indicated in their response letter.

There are just two paragraphs where the concerns have not been fully addressed:

Lines 286-288 (former line 257): The text still states that ‘biological knowledge and technologies pose a threat to public health’, which is untrue without further qualification. Looking at the title of the reference cited, I can see that you are referring to the MISUSE of biological knowledge and technologies, please make this much clearer so that the reader, who may be living with a different level of security stress than is present  in the USA, is quite sure where you are going with this without having to check on the reference used. I am also not sure that this is at all applicable to small scale farmers unless you mean that they are likely to be the victims of the misuse of the knowledge and technologies by other entities like terrorist organizations.

Lines 308-313: I still think that you need to mention that the Fasina et al study refers to a pig farm in Nigeria, where pigs are worth a fraction of what they are worth in the USA, the loss would surely be far greater on a similar-sized pig farm in the USA, while the benefit would also be greater. In Nigeria the pigs are probably worth more than in their poorer neighbour Benin, but during the first outbreaks of ASF in Benin in 1997 pigs were valued at $5 for the purpose of compensation funded by the World Bank, which caused gasps of disbelief and certainty of a serious typo in the USA! I am sure that even in 1997 pigs in the USA would have been valued at a lot more than $5 live weight.

Minor corrections to note:

Line 137: I would leave out ‘as zoonotic’, because plant diseases cannot be zoonotic as the term refers strictly to animal-origin diseases, the term zoonotic being derived from the same root as zoology, which means the study of animals.

Line 246: Should read ‘biosecurity.

Line 298: Correct ‘statue’.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Greatly improved!

Author Response

Please see attached document. Thank you again

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf