Biosecurity measures reducing Salmonella spp. and hepatitis E virus prevalence in pig farms: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Salmonella spp. and hepatitis E virus (HEV) are significant foodborne zoonotic pathogens, impacting the health of livestock, farmers, and the general public. This study aimed to identify biosecurity measures (BSMs) against these pathogens on swine farms in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Overall, 1529 articles from three scientific databases were screened manually and with the artificial intelligence tool ASReview. We identified 54 BSMs from 32 articles, primarily focused on Salmonella spp. control. Among the extracted BSMs, only five measures for Salmonella spp. control, namely "acidification of feed", "acidification of drinking water", "rodent control", "all-in and all-out production" and "disinfection" had sufficient observations to conduct a meta-analysis. Of these five, acidification and rodent control were found to be protective measures, i.e. their summary odds ratios in the corresponding meta-analyses were lower than 1, indicating lower odds of Salmonella spp. presence on farms which did implement these BSM compared to farms which did not (OR around 0.25). All-in and all-out production showed a non-significant protective effect (OR = 0.71) while disinfection showed a statistically non-significant lack of association between disinfection and presence of Salmonella spp. on the farm (OR = 1.03). For HEV, no meta-analysis could be performed. Two BSMs were significantly associated with a lower risk of HEV presence according to multiple papers, namely disinfecting vehicles (OR = 0.30) and quarantining pigs before introducing them on the farm (OR = 0.48). A risk of bias assessment for each included article revealed a high risk in most articles, mainly due to selection and performance bias. This emphasizes the lack of standardized, high-quality study designs and robust empirical evidence linking BSM implementation to pathogen reduction. The limited data available for meta-analysis, coupled with the high RoB in the literature, highlights the urgent need for stronger evidence on the effectiveness of BSMs in mitigating the transmission and spread of zoonotic pathogens such as Salmonella spp. and HEV on pig farms.