New Technologies Improve Transport Biosecurity and Animal Comfort

CANADA - A Research Scientist Engineering with the Saskatoon based Prairie Swine Centre reports new technologies have improved biosecurity during the transport of livestock while increasing the comfort and safety of the animals being moved, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 12 April 2016
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"Technology to Improve Swine Transportation" was among the topics discussed this week as part of the Prairie Swine Centre's 2016 Manitoba Spring Producer Meetings.

Dr Bernardo Predicala, a Research Scientist Engineering with the Prairie Swine Centre, says the heightened attention to swine transportation has been driven primarily by concerns over biosecurity as a result of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea but other considerations include animal welfare, efficiency during loading and unloading and the cost of transportation.

Dr Bernardo Predicala-Prairie Swine Centre:

When we started looking at this we looked at what are the available options or technologies out there to address the different issues that have been identified.

In response to potential contamination or infection of the animals during transport by airborne diseases, we've seen that there are some air filtration systems that have been installed in some trailers that are already on the road right now to protect the animals from infection by airborne diseases.

There's also been some misting and cooling systems that have been installed to address the issue of extreme conditions during summer in particular.

Then there are systems for automatic disinfection.

The main thing for PED is we want to heat up the trailer after disinfection to a certain temperature.
It deactivates the PED.

There are systems that can be installed in trailers right now but the main barrier against that is the cost of installing all of those systems.

For more information visit the Prairie Swine Centre web site at prairieswine.com.

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