October 29, 2014

New car wash to shorten quarantine period for Danish pig trucks

Erik Larsen, president of the Danish Research Centre (PRC), which will build the new facility with the support of the Danish agriculture organization Landbrug & Fødevarer (Agriculture & Food), said that hopefully diseases such as African swine fever and the porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDv) that "are lurking just outside Denmark" would be stopped from reaching the country.

The new car wash, which is being built in Padborg, is expected to become operational next year. Local transport companies that own the trucks crossing the Danish border carrying pigs and piglets sold in neighboring countries will shoulder the cost of disinfection.

PRC said, though, that the shorter quarantine period would help allay the extra cost.

The disinfection costs will be paid by the transport firms but PRC says the shorter quarantine period will help to allay the extra cost.

At present, returning trucks are subject to 48-hour quarantine after they had been washed at the border. With the new and improved disinfection method, the quarantine period would be reduced to just 12 hours.

As many as 22,000 Danish trucks cross the border every year on their way to sell pigs and piglets in other countries.