Abstract

A foreign animal disease outbreak or other catastrophic event impacting the swine industry may require the need to depopulate facilities, resulting in large numbers of mortalities. If these mass mortalities are not managed properly, there can be negative economic consequences and challenges with biosecurity. Current methods to dispose of swine mortalities include composting bins for routine carcass disposal, composting windrows, shallow burial, landfill disposal, rendering for non-infected carcasses, and incineration. However, these existing methods pose a risk to biosecurity if the animals were diseased with a highly pathogenic virus. Removing carcasses from an infected facility poses an immediate threat to biosecurity because of the exposure of the pathogen to the environment via air, water, soil, vegetation, or fomites (i.e., people, vehicles, and carcass handling equipment); therefore, more biosecure methods of mortality management strategies are needed for swine. The goals of this research (Figure 1) were to create a novel mobile test facility replicating a typical swine finishing barn, validate the facility performance, and execute tests for in-barn carcass management strategies to characterize carcass response.

How to Cite:

Ramirez, B., Andersen, D. S. & Weyer, S., (2023) “Carcass Management Research at LBREC”, Iowa State University Research and Demonstration Farms Progress Reports 2022(1), 39-40.