HEAL ▶▶▶TH
Keeping ASF at bay at the Danish border
One way to successfully fight African Swine Fever is to make sure that the virus never enters a country. Denmark is keen to keep its doors closed to the virus – it upgraded the compulsory border cleaning and disinfection procedure for trucks and also constructed a fence.
BY VINCENT TER BEEK, EDITOR, PIG PROGRESS A
The truck re- ceives a shower of disinfectant after having been washed.
large empty Polish pig truck with three floors en- ters the ‘Danish’ washing station. Immediately the truck is attended to and the windscreen is properly covered in soap. “That is where most of the dirt is
going, so it needs some additional attention,” explains Claus Clausen, director of Danish Safety Wash in Padborg, southern Denmark at the border with Germany, right at the motorway. Very soon after, a moveable construction on rails moves slow- ly from front to back and front again to high pressure clean the entire lorry. After 15 minutes of washing the truck moves forward and drives through a porch spraying the disinfectant Vanadox on top of the truck.
Obligation to properly wash As Denmark is mostly an exporting pig country, many trucks leave Denmark full of piglets, and will come back empty. To
avoid the introduction of pathogens into the Danish herd, each truck is obliged to be properly washed and disinfected before moving on – a programme paid for by the Danish pig producers themselves. Danish Safety Wash is one of the two commercial companies in Padborg having a contract with SEGES, the Danish cooper- ative pig research organisation. SEGES is the owner of the Danish Transport Standard scheme, and the washing and dis- infection stations have to ensure that they fulfil the require- ments of this standard. Together they check each incoming livestock truck – and once approved they get an obligatory certificate. The rules are crystal clear: no pigs can be picked up in Denmark without the certificate. The introduction of African Swine Fever into Eastern Europe has changed the way of working of Danish Safety Wash quite a bit, explains Clausen. Some trucks indeed come from areas where African Swine Fever (ASF) has broken out or has even become endemic, like in Middle and Eastern Europe. Inside the washing station’s control cabins, therefore a map of Eu- rope is hanging, subdividing the continent into green zones (no ASF), red zones (risk areas) and black zones (ASF present), which will determine the type of treatment a truck will get. All trucks are equipped with GPS, so for the washing station it is relatively easy to trace in detail which zones the trucks had been prior to coming to Denmark. In case GPS fails to pass on data, the truck will automatically be treated like a ‘black zone’ truck.
10 ▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 1, 2020
PHOTO: VINCENT TER BEEK
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28
