To Keep African Swine Fever Out, Denmark Is Planning A Southern Boar(der) Fence

January 27, 20198:02 AM ET

SIDSEL OVERGAARD


A wild boar at at an enclosure set up by forest rangers in a northwestern district of Berlin in 2017. Denmark is building a $12 million fence in an effort to keep out wild boars from Germany.
Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

As U.S. politicians continue to spar over the idea of building a border wall, Denmark is preparing its own controversial southern border-control barrier.

The target is wild boars — specifically, wild boars from Germany. But environmentalists warn the planned 5 ft.-high, 40-mile fence will harm the region's wildlife and may not even serve the function for which it's intended.

Understanding the rationale for spending $12 million on a fence that may not even work requires understanding the enormity of the Danish pig industry. At any given moment, Denmark is home to at least twice as many pigs as people (roughly 12 million pigs to not quite 6 million Danes). The country's export market for pigs amounts to about $5 billion a year.

At Berith Nissen's farm in southern Denmark, visitors must change their clothes and socks, wash their hands and slip into borrowed shoes before she'll open the door to reveal some of her 10,000-plus pigs.

"We have to be sure that we don't take diseases with us in the stable," she explains.

There are plenty of pig diseases to worry about, but the one keeping Nissen up at night lately is African swine fever (ASF). It hasn't hit Denmark yet, but last fall, it turned up among several wild boars in Belgium. Outbreaks are becoming common in China and parts of Eastern Europe.

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https://www.npr.org/2019/01/27/688152778/to-keep-african-swine-fever-out-denmark-is-planning-a-southern-boar-der-fence?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news