Farmscape for January 22, 2018

A system that uses high pressure water and a vacuum followed by dry heat  is proving effective for cleaning and disinfecting swine transport vehicles.
Scientists working on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc have been developing a system for cleaning and disinfecting swine transport vehicles to reduce the potential for transferring disease from one load of animals to the next.
Dr. Terry Fonstad, with the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, says the concept involves a hydrovac system which uses a hot water wash followed by baking.

Clip-Dr. Terry Fonstad-University of Saskatchewan:
It's a vacuum system that we use in the excavation industry where you use high pressure water to make a hole and then you vacuum up the dirt and the water.
The vacuum is significant air flows, in the four thousand CFM  range with 300 horse power motors so it's not insignificant amounts of suction.
What we do is we would go in and you would take a dirty truck that had just been hauling animals, you would start at the back and you would vacuum up all of the shavings and left over manure and things in the truck up to the front.
Then you would switch heads and you would use water pressure and vacuum at the same time, much like cleaning carpet, where you've got high pressure water that would do the cleaning and it would suction that material away immediately and you would work your way back from the front of the truck to the back and, as you exited the truck, you would have a clean truck.
Once the truck is clean, what we've found with the veterinarians working with the various viruses and bacteria that are associated with swine diseases is that dry heating of these things to a certain temperature for a certain time will inactivate them.
So now the trick becomes, from an engineering standpoint, how do we heat 53 foot livestock trailers to elevated temperatures for extended periods of time economically and ensure that every piece of the trailer gets to that temperature to inactivate any bacteria or virus that are on the trailer.

Dr. Fonstad says the concept has been shown to be effective.
He suggests the next step would be a three year program to get to the point where the system can be operated remotely by someone standing outside of the trailer.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork