COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Denmark has begun erecting a 43.4-mile fence along the German border to keep out wild boars in an attempt to prevent the spread of African swine fever, which could jeopardize the country's valuable pork industry.
Work on the fence, which will be up to 5 feet tall, began Monday in Padborg, 140 miles southwest of Copenhagen. It was authorized by Danish lawmakers in June after the government warned that Denmark's pork exports to non-European Union countries -- worth $1.6 billion annually -- could be affected by African swine fever. In 2016, total Danish pork exports were worth about $4.55 billion.
An outbreak of African swine fever -- a disease deadly to wild boar and domestic pigs but harmless to humans and other animals -- could devastate the country's pork industry. No treatment or vaccination against the disease exists.
Critics say the $4.6 million fence will harm wildlife and is a symbolic gesture tackling a largely nonexistent problem. Danish officials have admitted that wild animals could, in theory, pass through the gaps in the fence where it crosses highways, roads and streams. Danish officials said the fence, as planned, will also have small gaps roughly every 300 feet to allow smaller animals to pass through.
No cases of African swine fever have yet been reported in Germany, though they have been in some neighboring countries.
German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported Monday that Jan Philipp Albrecht, the agriculture minister of the neighboring German state of Schleswig-Holstein, as saying the disease is "a serious threat for animals and the pig market." However, it said he added that "we have significant doubts about the usefulness and necessity of a fence between Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein."
Orla Osterby, agriculture spokesman for the Conservative People's party of Denmark, applauded the effort to protect pork exports in an announcement released by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food on Monday.
"We can see African swine fever moving closer and closer to Denmark, making the threat very real," she said.
Britain's Telegraph newspaper reported that Mogens Dall, chairman of the Danish agricultural association Landbo Syd, had called the border wall an "insurance policy against African swine flu."
"You also insure your house against fire, although it will probably never burn," he told Jyllands Posten, a Danish daily newspaper. "It would mean ruin and unemployment for up to 33,000 people who are employed in the sector."
According to the European statistical agency Eurostat, there are some 150 million pigs in the EU, and 40 percent of them are in Spain and Germany, with significant numbers also in France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland.
Denmark is the only EU country where pigs outnumber people, with 215 pigs to every 100 residents.
Information for this article was contributed by Jan M. Olsen and Geir Moulson of The Associated Press and by Deanna Paul of The Washington Post.
Business on 01/29/2019