By Bruce Cochrane.
Research conducted by VIDO-InterVac has shown heating swine transport vehicles after cleaning is effective in killing disease causing pathogens.
Scientists with the University of Saskatchewan, the Prairie Swine Centre, the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute and VIDO-InterVac, in partnership with Swine Innovation Porc, are working to speed up the washing and disinfection of swine transport vehicles.
Dr. Volker Gerdts, the Associate Director Research with VIDO-InterVac, says VIDO's primary role has been to verify the inactivation of pathogens, including six bacteria and six viruses, using heat.
Dr. Volker Gerdts-VIDO-InterVac:
They include, for example, in the viruses the PED virus and the PRRS virus, important viruses but there's also six bacteria that are very important.
In terms of methods, we looked at the various inactivation methods so heat and then also looking at pH and disinfectants but really as part of this project it's our role to confirm that the heat that is being used in some of these baking units inactivates the pathogens.
There is already units in the field.
The industry is using this approach already.
After cleaning, washing and disinfecting, they're baking the trailers and this is something that is currently being done.
The various units are using slightly different temperatures and slightly different schedules.
Our role in this project is to verify that certain temperatures completely inactivate the pathogens.
It's really a combination of temperature and time so I can't really give you all of those but, if you were to go with a higher temperature, like 80 degrees for example, that would be sufficient to kill most pathogens within minutes.
If you were to go with 70 or 65 degrees then you're probably looking at 15 minutes or something like that.
Dr. Gerdts says the next step is to develop approaches to ensure the cleaning and baking is done in a way that inactivates all of the pathogens.
Source: Farmscape