Application of Heat Revolutionises Swine Transport Trailer Disinfection

The Associate Dean Research and Partnerships with the University of Saskatchewan's College of Engineering says the application of heat to kill disease causing pathogens has revolutionised the disinfection of swine transport trailers. Members of the Swine Innovation Porc Biosecurity in the Canadian Swine Transport Industry Advisory Group met last week to update efforts aimed at improving the efficiency and lowering the cost of cleaning and disinfecting swine transport trailers.

Dr. Terry Fonstad, the Associate Dean Research and Partnerships with the University of Saskatchewan's College of Engineering, says the biggest breakthrough so far has been the recognition that heat alone will inactivate disease causing pathogens.

Clip-Dr. Terry Fonstad-University of Saskatchewan:

Dry heating or heating, just heat alone will control these pathogens. Even the most persistent pathogens, and the one most persistent so far has been PED, have been inactivated at heating to 75 degrees for 20 minutes or 80 degrees for less than that. Those are temperatures that are below the boiling point of water.

They're something you actually heat a trailer to. They're actually attainable and, when we announced this to industry at a previous meeting, it was amazing to see. They opened up their phones and told their folks at home to start heating these trailers. The had dryers there.

They were drying trailers at 40 degrees and they just told their staff to turn the temperature up, get them to these temperatures and so we probably implemented it across Canada in 20 minutes from getting the results from the lab to getting it implemented, to the credit of the industry. That's probably the biggest thing, getting rid of pathogens by simply heating trucks.

Then it just becomes technical issues, how do you heat trucks, how do you verify the heat, how do you clean trucks better? All of those things are technical but that breakthrough of controlling pathogens was probably the biggest.