Denmark begins building wild boar fence along border with Germany

Denmark's agriculture ministry Monday announced that the government has started to construct a fence along the border with Germany to keep wild boar from entering the country.

Copenhagen said the decision was made over fears of African swine fever crossing the border and potentially ravaging the country's thriving pork industry.

“We have 11 billion good reasons to do everything we can to prevent African swine fever reaching Denmark," said Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, minister for environment and food, in a press release, noting that Denmark's pork industry exports to non-EU markets are worth 11 billion krone (€1.47 billion).

"Now we can finally get started on erecting our wild boar fence. The fence and our increased efforts to hunt wild boar will break the chain of infection so there is less risk of African swine fever spreading to Denmark.”

Germany has yet to report any cases of the virus, which is deadly to domestic pigs and wild boar, but harmless to humans. While mostly concentrated in central and eastern Europe, Belgium has reported dozens of new cases of African swine fever since the beginning of January, raising concerns among the EU's pig powerhouses, France and Germany.

Once completed — which should be done by the fall of this year — the Danish fence could stretch for nearly 70 kilometers.

The announcement comes as Danish authorities spend four days testing their response mechanisms to fight the disease in case of a potential crisis.