Cooking effect on fatty acid profile of pork breakfast sausages enriched in conjugated linoleic acid by dietary supplementation or direct addition

Posted in: Meat Quality by admin on January 1, 2009 | No Comments

The aim of the present study was to study the effects of grilling on the chemical and fatty acid composition of pork products enriched in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) through animal dietary supplementation or through direct addition in the product formulation. In addition this study aims to compare the useful of CLA dietary supplementation or direct addition into breakfast sausages. The results from this study show that pork products can be modified to provide a significant increase in a functional lipid, which can have positive influences on health. Moreover, grilling had no clear effect on fatty acid levels in sausages with CLA added during manufacturing process. Grilling has a small but significant effect in sausages made with meat and back fat from pigs with a dietary CLA addition. Total CLA levels were not affected by grilling. Therefore, since CLA levels have been found to be stable during cooking, texture and sensory properties of both types of sausages should be evaluated in future studies to clarify the optimal process to increase CLA levels in pork breakfast sausages.

For more information the full article can be found at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03088146

Manage Volatility, Manage Risk

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Economists’ predictions that 2008 would be a tough year for pork producers turned out to be an understatement.
The meltdown of the financial community and the resulting loss of investment funds in the commodity markets have made the situation even more dire for every American businessperson, including US. pork producers. To survive, we must all learn to live in a very volatile world, and that means doing a better job of managing risk. The most important mantra for pork producers to learn is — marketing is absolutely everything. Without a plan to assure your marketing
objectives, it doesn’t make sense to spend time and money on finishing a hog to 265 lb. With a good set of financial and performance figures, completing a plan is not that difficult, but a systematic approach is extremely important.
The plan must include three fundamental factors: Knowledge. Evaluate the risk present in your business. Know your
costs (variable and fixed). Have a sound knowledge of the tools available and packer/investment community
terminology. Structure. Develop and complete a well-designed and structurally sound, written plan. Anticipate hog and grain price changes as much as 18 to 24 months into the future. Design a strategy to counteract any adverse volatility.
Discipline. Have the professional discipline to execute the plan as designed. Review the results. Keep records that will help make management decisions in the future. It is concluded that nothing is forever, not even a rally
in the hog futures, and if a profit is available, it should be exercised. In turn, a “structured” plan allowed us to capture what we could of the 2008 summer rally. And, “discipline” gave us the confidence to position our clients for some much-needed profit in 2009.

Political Precaution, Pandemics and Protectionism

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In the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, a new form of protectionism has come to the
fore which calls into question the commitment of governments to the rule of law in
international trade and considerably increases the risks firms face in the international
commercial environment. This paper finds that countries certainly have the option to bring a complaint forward to the WTO’s dispute settlement system, as the H1N1-related import bans were imposed without a scientific justification or a risk assessment.10 The WTO disputes process, however, takes too long and is too cumbersome to deal with this type of capricious imposition of import bans. The damage has been done to exporters, and it is likely that the bans will be lifted long before a formal dispute could wind its way through the WTO disputes system. In any case, the WTO disputes system was not designed to deal with this type of trade policy making. Governments largely live up to their
international commitments – flagrant flouting of the rules has been the exception. The rules, however, were agreed when scientific expertise was better respected and before the revolution in electronic media technology. Thus, no restraints on the exercise of political precaution were built into the rules. Trade policy makers and those with an interest in engaging in international commercial activities should be worried because, once it becomes apparent that barriers to imports can be imposed despite a scientific consensus to the contrary, the progress achieved in international trade rule making since the inception of the GATT may have been considerably eroded. The balance between the strong rules of trade desired by firms wishing to engage in international commerce and the need, at times,
for politicians to respond to requests for protection may be changing in favour of more protection.

A novel strategy to select Bifidobacterium strains and prebiotics as natural growth promoters in newly weaned pigs

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The main objective of this work has been to design a new strategy for identifying suitable, orally administered, natural treatments that will promote growth in weaning piglets. An in vivo screening of putative probiotic and prebiotic candidates was carried out to identify those candidates with the best ability to positively modify the piglet gut ecosystem. The diet of the weaning piglets was then supplemented with the identified probiotics and/or synbiotics, and the dose– response effects on microflora composition and intestinal tolerance were assessed. It was found that the in vivo screening procedure could be a helpful tool to identify bifidobacteria strains as putative probiotic candidates for the weaning piglet. The data show that the two different strains of bifidobacteria (R18 and Su 891), which have similar ability in improving the count of hindgut bifidobacteria, do not influence piglet growth performance in the same way. The variation in the effects of the strains underlines the advantage of using probiotic combinations as a synergistic mixture, providing a complementary effect on animal health and increasing the possibility of the probiotics to colonize the gut, albeit transiently.

For more information the full article can be found at http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/livsci

Correlating blood immune parameters and a CCT7 genetic variant with the shedding of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in swine

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In this study, 40 crossbred pigs were intranasally inoculated with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (Salmonella Typhimurium) and monitored for Salmonella fecal shedding and blood immune parameters at 2, 7, 14 and 20 days post-inoculation (dpi). It was found that linking specific genes and genetic polymorphisms with the porcine immune response to Salmonella infection and shedding may identify potential markers for carrier pigs as well as targets for disease diagnosis, intervention and prevention.

For more information the full article can be found at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03781135

The effect of sampling strategy on the estimated prevalence of welfare outcome measures on finishing pig farms

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The effect of sampling strategy on the estimates of prevalence of some welfare outcome measures was investigated as part of a larger project examining the feasibility and benefits of incorporating some on-farm welfare outcome assessments into UK Pig Farm Assurance Schemes. All finishing pigs (>40 kg) on 6 farms that had pens of 25 pigs or less were assessed for dirtiness, body lesions, tail lesions, bursae, lameness, oral behaviour and pigs requiring hospitalisation. A statistical sampling methodology was applied to the data to generate 10,000 random samples for each measure, on each farm and for every possible number of sampled pens on that farm. The 95% confidence interval range, the proportion of samples outside a ‘tolerance’ range and the proportion of samples that would wrongly classify the farm with respect to a ‘threshold’ were calculated for each measure on each farm for every possible sample size. It was found that even large sample sizes were unable to accurately reflect the whole farm for measures with very low prevalences (lameness and pigs requiring hospitalisation). For the other measures, as the number of pens sampled increased, the confidence interval range and the proportion of samples outside the ‘tolerance’ range reduced. The differing inter-pen variation in prevalence on a farm gave rise to differences in accuracy of prevalence estimates between the farms. Those farms with a true farm prevalence close to the threshold required more pens to be sampled to achieve the same level of accuracy of classification as other farms with similar confidence intervals but a more extreme prevalence. The effect of sampling on the estimate of prevalence should be considered when an accurate prevalence of the whole population is
required.

For more information the full article can be found at http://journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/applan/issues

Systematic Review of Swine Euthanasia Methods and Welfare Measures Reported

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This topic reviews the process used to gather, screen for relevance, and assess the quality of current literature regarding published methods of swine euthanasia as well as the summary of the results of the data analysis, including a description of the welfare measures included in papers describing euthanasia. More than 4,500 citations have been collected using terms for “euthanasia,” “slaughter methods,” and “swine”; preliminary screening removed articles that were either not relevant to the topic of swine or euthanasia/slaughter methods or not in English. The second level of screening segregates primary research articles from editorials/opinions, surveys, or other narrative reviews. Only primary research is used for the final quality assessment review and analysis, but review papers are used to check the thoroughness of the reference list. The final set of literature evaluates and compares measurements of pain and aversion, the achievement of death, and other physiologic parameters described in the euthanasia paper. The intent of this research is to provide this scientific body of literature to swine veterinarians and the swine industry as well as identify areas of opportunity where more research is needed. Further, the intent is to highlight areas where reporting is deficient or incomplete and improve the quality of reporting of papers describing euthanasia.

Effect of feeding reduced crude protein and phosphorus diets on weaning-finishing pig growth performance, carcass characteristics, and bone characteristics

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This study determined the effects of feeding a corn- and soybean mealbased diet (control) or a low nutrient excretion (LNE) diet, formulated with reduced dietary CP and additional synthetic AA, low phytic acid corn, and phytase,
on pig growth performance during the grower (BW = 32 to 77 kg) and finisher (BW = 78 to 126 kg) periods and on carcass and bone characteristics at slaughter. It was concluded that feeding LNE diets resulted in the maintenance of overall growth performance, bone variables, and carcass characteristics. However, further refinements are still required in the nursery and grower phases of pig production to optimize LNE diet use by the swine industry.

For more information the full article can be found at http://jas.fass.org/

Providing Skills Certification and Support for Canada’s Livestock Transport Sector

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Powerpoint presentation, presented at the 2009 Livestock Transportation Conference

Increased sow nutrition during midgestation affects muscle fiber development and meat quality, with no consequences on growth performance

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Pregnant sow nutrition has potential effects on the muscle fiber development of progeny in utero. A total of 199 Landrace × Large White sows from parities 0 to 6 and their offspring were used to evaluate the effects of increasing the feeding amount during midpregnancy on the muscle tissue, growth performance, and meat quality of the progeny. The experiment was divided into 2 study replicates, and in each replicate, sows were assigned to 1 of the 2 treatments:
1) sows in the control group (C sows) were fed 2.5 to 3.0 kg/d (feed: 12.1 MJ of ME/kg and 0.62% lysine)
throughout gestation; and 2) sows in the high group (H sows) received an extra feed allowance of 1.5 kg/d for gilts and 2.0 kg/d for multiparous sows above the C amount from d 45 to 85 of gestation (period of secondary muscle fiber formation). Sow backfat was recorded on d 40 and 85 of gestation. Sow performance (litter size and piglet BW) at farrowing and on d 18 of lactation was measured. At weaning, pigs were divided into 5 BW groups/treatment, and progeny growth performance was measured during the nursery (n = 958) and the growing-finishing (n = 636) periods. At slaughter, carcass and meat quality traits (lean content, main cut weight, pH, Minolta color, and drip loss) were recorded from the second lightest group at weaning (BW group 4; n = 90), and samples from the longissimus thoracis
muscle were taken to study muscle fiber characteristics (n = 70). The extra nutrition from d 45 to 85 of gestation did not lead to differences in litter size or piglet BW at farrowing and on d 18 of lactation. Pigs born to H mothers had fewer muscle fibers and fewer estimated primary and secondary fibers than did pigs born to C mothers (P < 0.05). However, postnatal growth performance was not consistently affected by the maternal treatment. The smaller number of muscle fibers found in the H group of pigs was associated with fewer type IIB fibers (P < 0.05) with greater cross-sectional areas
(P < 0.10), which might be related to the significantly greater meat pH at 24 h postmortem and the smaller L* (lightness) values recorded in the H group of pigs. Results from the present study confirm the existence of effects of maternal nutrition on fetal development, at least in terms of muscle tissue development and meatquality, although with no beneficial effects were found for the postnatal growth performance of the progeny.  

For more information the full article can be found at http://jas.fass.org/