PIG HEALTH AND PRODUCTION SURVEILLANCE IN DENMARK - SAMPLING DESIGN, DATA RECORDING, AND MEASURES OF DISEASE FREQUENCY

The Danish Swine Efficiency Control System and the Danish Pig Health S cheme are presented as the historical background for a 3 year pilot pr oject called the Health and Production Surveillance system (HEPS). The overall objective of HEPS (launched in 1989) was to provide pig produ cers, their advisors, and other people associated with the pig industr y with information about production performance, disease occurrence, a nd the impact of disease at the herd and national levels. This paper p resents the sampling design, data recording and measures of disease fr equency at the national level. The HEPS database includes information about production, clinical disease occurrence and routine veterinary s laughter inspection findings. All data concerning production and clini cal disease were producer-recorded, while carcass lesions were recorde d by meat inspectors at the abattoirs. A three-digit hierarchical dise ase coding system was designed for classification of clinical disease, mortality and culling reason. Disease frequency was measured on a dai ly basis. Smoothed estimates of the instantaneous incidence density sh owed that the most frequent diseases were: among sows, reproductive pr oblems at farrowing (incidence 1.5 per 1000 sow-days); among non-weane d piglets, gastrointestinal diseases (incidence 0.8 per 100 piglet-day s) and mortality (incidence 0.3 per 100 piglet-days); among fatteners, respiratory diseases (incidence 4 per 1000 fattener-days).