While industry people continue to call on the federal government and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to listen to the hog industry on livestock trailer washing biosecurity, others are moving ahead with improved and stepped up technology to wash those trailers.
Researchers with the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute are preparing to move to the next phase in the application of hydrovac technology to the cleaning of swine transport vehicles.
PAMI, as part of automating the washing and disinfection of swine transport trailers to reduce the risk of spreading swine diseases researchers are working on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc exploring the use of hydrovac technology.
The technology using high pressure water and a vacuum which operates much like a carpet cleaner and is typically used to excavate soil from around sensitive underground utilities.
Dr. Hubert Landry, a research scientist with PAMI, says initial tests show applying this technology to cleaning swine transport trailers is feasible.
“The current practices to clean livestock trailers are very labor intensive,” said Dr. Landry. “We were able to clean the floors of a trailer in about 40 minutes using under 150 litres of water which is very promising, considering it takes several hours for the laborers to get inside the trailer and clean it out and it also takes a lot of water. Our tests were in a very controlled environment obviously and we extrapolated those results we measured on a section of trailer but we are still very encouraged by the time requirements and the amount of water we used. Now it’s a matter of pursuing the research, bringing that system to the next level to see if we can work toward the goal of automation.”
Dr. Landry says in a livestock trailer there are a number of obstacles from the anti-slip pattern in the aluminum floor to ribbing in the floor to gate latches, so the next step will be to develop a cleaning head that will accommodate those different surfaces.
Dr. Terry Fonstad, a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, says pilot testing has demonstrated the effectiveness of the initial prototype.
“At this point it’s a bunch of nozzles and some hoses but it’s proved to be quite effective. If you can imagine in your head what a carpet cleaner looks like, with a nozzle that sprays down onto your carpet and then a suction hose that sucks that up right away that’s kind of the same thing except that it’s an industrial size,” said Fonstad. “PAMI has developed a nozzle head that would clean the bottom of the trailer that looks almost exactly like that. Once you’ve got everything sucked out you take this five head nozzle with the suction line and clean the bottom of the trailer.
The pilot testing that we did with just the floor cleaning, PAMI felt that they could get down to probably cleaning the decks of a 53 foot trailer in 40 minutes with less than 200 litres of water and it was all contained when it was done.”
The next thing would be to design other tools that would be needed to do edges and crevices and sides and roofs and those kind of things and then put the complete system together with a hose reel and be able to clean that trailer manually with these nozzles and hoses and hose reels in the event then that once you could do that the next step would be then to automate it, he adds.
Dr. Fonstad says, once the trailer is clean, if it can be heated to 70 degrees in a safe manner for a specific amount of time it would then be safe to use immediately. The hope is to have a manual system developed and proof of pathogen kill by the end of this year. •
— By Harry Siemens
