In the regard to the pig farmers they did break the biosecurity laws for self benefit and should have known better. Was possible ment as a warning to others in this regard and who knows what final effect it may have had on the whole piggery industry in this country.
With people entering properties from one area to another can have devastating consequences to some properties especially if the clothes is worn at both places.
A WA piggery that smuggled Danish pig semen in shampoo bottles, thereby risking a virus dubbed the ‘pig plague’ entering Australia, has been fined $500,000, and the two men at its helm have been jailed. GD Pork, director Torben Soerensen, 39, and breeding manager Henning Laue, 74, were sentenced in Perth District Court on Tuesday over their involvement in the importation of the biosecurity hazard.
Soerensen received a minimum jail term of 18 months, while Laue was imprisoned for a minimum eight months. The court heard the Pinjarra piggery began smuggling the European semen into its operations in 2009 in order to introduce foreign DNA into its breeding program as Danish pigs produced on average seven more piglets per year than Australian pigs.
The program breached Australia’s biosecurity rules which require pig stocks to be ‘closed genetic herds’, meaning breeding using foreign genes is not permitted, to prevent the spread of disease.Pig plague, or porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, was first reported in the United States in the 1980s, and spread across western Europe in 1990s.Symptoms of the viral disease include infertility, stillborn piglets, and pneumonia. PRRS remains the most economically significant disease impacting US pig production despite ongoing attempts to eradicate the disease.
