SWINE HEALTH IN DENMARK .1. MAIN CHARACTE RISTICS AND THE EXTENSION SERVICE

By the generous support of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and t he Danske Slagterier, a group of Hungarian experts spent 3 weeks in De nmark in the August of 1995 in order to study the pig industry. In thi s series they give survey of the main experiences. The pig population of Denmark is free of the most important swine infectious diseases (Ta ble 1). Of the about 2191 veterinarians 1147 are private practitioners , 316 vets work for the education, research and diagnostic laboratorie s. The rest are employed in the feed and pharmaceutical industry, the state health service, food inspection and in other minor fields (Table 2). The traditional veterinary care of swine populations have changed for long to the production oriented, planned herd health programmes p rovided by the well organised network of consultants that relies on th e integrated farm management system. Private practitioners, members of animal clinics and employees of the Danske Slagterier can equally act as consultants. Recently the Danish Parliament modified the Veterinar y Act in order to strengthen the prophylactic characteristics of the v eterinary care. Postgradual training of swine specialists is of high l evel. The 2 year course consists of 9 weeks of theoretical lectures co vering the most important fields of swine diseases, housing and feedin g technologies, herd health management, reproduction biology, immunolo gy as well as use of libraries, methods of statistical analyses and pr actices of oral communication. Candidates should prepare and defend a case study and sit for examination. The certificate is valid for 5 yea rs. Flow of information is of exemplary in Denmark too. The Health and Production Surveillance System (HEPS) forms part of the Integrated Fa rm Management System that has been in use since 1989. The basis of the system is the data recorded by the farmer and analysed by the centre of HEPS. Processed data are available for the consultant (Tables 3 and 4) and may form basis of veterinary decisions. The network of swine s pecialists have 31 centres evenly distributed all over Denmark. These centres employ 62 specialists (vets, geneticists, feed experts etc.) a nd over 60 technicians.