Agricultural Labour – Meeting the Safety Requirements

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

There is a trend across Canada to implement and enforce occupational health
and safety regulations in agricultural workplaces. Employer-employee
relationships generally trigger enforcement; as a result, hog operations and
mushroom farms seem to be targeted. Saskatchewan “Farm workers” are excluded from minimum standards; however, workers in egg hatcheries, greenhouses, nurseries, bush clearing, and commercial hog operations are not considered
“farm workers.” Hog workers are entitled to overtime after 10 hours a day or 80 hours in 2
consecutive weeks and there are special provisions for workers and employers to agree to an
alternate day instead of a statutory holiday in the legislation.

Enrichment of pork products with DHA omega-3 lipids

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DHA is a long chain (C22:3) omega-3 fatty acid normally found in fish.
Pigs and humans can convert shorter dietary omega-3 fats (18:3) from plants,
such as flax, to DHA but only at a rate < 10%. Standard corn or grain fed pork typically contains < 20mg DHA per 100 g serving but this can be increased to ~70mg if the pigs are fed 15% crushed flax. The present trial was conducted to determine if pork DHA content could be raised even higher, if DHA was fed directly. The bacon (n=40) was distributed for sensory evaluation in a home use test (HUT) survey. Often feeding highly unsaturated fats to pigs can lead to problems of `off’ odours caused by fat oxidation. Bacon from pigs fed diets of more than 0.6% DHA (~1188 mg per day) began to have off odours and off flavours described as `barnyard’ or `fishy’ which correlated with the amount of oxidation, as measured by thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). In a survey of 40 panellists, over 60% said they would choose omega-3 bacon over regular bacon; however only ~ 60% would buy bacon supplemented above the 0.6% level.

Ileal and total tract digestibility in growing pigs fed cassava root meal and rice bran with inclusion of cassava leaves, sweet potato vine, duckweed and stylosanthes foliage

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Four F1 (Large White x Mong Cai), crossbred pigs, surgically fitted with post-valve T-caecum (PVTC) cannulas, were used in a 4*4 Latin square arrangement to determine the nutritive value of feeds in which the foliages from sweet potato,
cassava, duckweed and stylosanthes provided 30% of the dry matter of the diet, the remainder of which was a mixture (50:50) of cassava root meal and rice bran. The diets with fresh water spinach or fresh cassava leaves had a higher apparent digestibility of organic matter in the total digestive tract but not at the level of the ileum, when compared with the diets containing sweet potato vines or stylosanthes foliage. Apparent digestibility of crude protein was also higher on the diets with water spinach and cassava leaves but the differences were confounded by different concentrations of crude protein in the foliages, and were not significant when the digestibility coefficients were corrected by covariance for differences in protein content of the diets. The total tract apparent digestibility of the crude fiber ranged from 44 to 51%, and did not differ among diets. On all the diets, a substantial proportion of the crude fiber (close to 40%) was digested pre-caecally.

Willingness to Approach Behavior and Feed Disappearance of Weaned Pigs Following Vaccination With Mycoplasma Vaccines

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An adaptation of the nonhuman animal observation section of the 2003 Swine
Welfare Assurance program (SWAP) was utilized to evaluate the behavior of
weaned pigs following vaccination with Ingelvac MycoFLEX® (Boehringer
Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc., St. Joseph, MO) and Respisure®-One (Pfizer Animal
Health, Exton, PA). The objective was to determine if field observations of
markedly reduced pig activity following vaccination with certain Mycoplasma
hyopneumoniae vaccines could be confirmed and quantified by observing postvaccinal
pig behavior and feed disappearance. A total of 1,832 weaned pigs
17–23 days of age were allocated across 72 nursery pens (36 pens per treatment
group), resulting in approximately 25 pigs/pen with pen as the experimental
unit.
Pigs were evaluated to determine willingness to approach and feed disappearance
behavior pre- and postvaccination with each population of pigs serving as
its own prevaccination baseline for postvaccination behavior observations. After
entering and crouching down in a pen, the blinded observer counted all pigs who
approached him during a 15-s period. The pigs approaching the observer were
designated as willing to approach. The difference in pre- and postvaccination
values is reported here as a decrease in percentage approachability.
A significant decrease in postvaccination willingness to approach was observed
within both groups of pigs (p < .0001). However, the decrease in
willingness to approach was significantly less for the Ingelvac MycoFLEX®
vaccinated pigs compared with the Respisure-One vaccinated pigs (11.38% vs.
27.05%, p < .0001). The Ingelvac MycoFLEX® vaccinated pigs consumed
significantly more feed through 24 and 48 hr postvaccination (p < .0001 and
p D .0001, respectively). These findings suggest that willingness to approach and feed consumption may be useful parameters for assessing vaccine reactivity
(side effects) in pigs.

Amino acid digestibility of distillers dried grains with solubles, produced from sorghum, a sorghum-corn blend, and corn fed to growing pigs

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Since there are no data on the apparent ileal digestibility (AID) or the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of amino acids (AA) in sorghum (S-DDGS) or in blends of sorghum and corn DDGS (SC-DDGS). Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to measure the AID and SID of AA in S-DDGS and SC-DDGS and compare these values to the SID of AA in C-DDGS. It was found that the digestibility of CP and Lys in S-DDGS and SC-DDGS is similar to values obtained for
C-DDGS, but many of the remaining AA are less digestible in S-DDGS and SC-DDGS than in C-DDGS. The concentration and digestibility of AA in C-DDGS varies among ethanol plants, which impedes the prediction of the concentration of digestible AA from the concentration of total AA.

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Holistic Method Turns The Tide on PRRS

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Research compiled over the years has given pork producers better “tools in their toolbox” to combat porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), says Scott Dee, DVM, director of the Swine Disease Eradication Center at the University of Minnesota. “Today more than ever before, producers can take a holistic, systematic approach to managing PRRS with greater success. Our improved understanding of the dynamics of the virus; transmission, infection, diagnosis and monitoring; and vaccination protocols has helped us provide producers with highly effective tools to turn the tide on PRRS infections,” Dee says. “The most effective and successful PRRS control and prevention within
an area requires a high degree of cooperation, coordination and collaboration within and among production
systems in a region,” Dee concludes. “Fortunately, producers have a number of effective tools available to better
help them determine current status, assess PRRS risk, measure and monitor infection status and improve their disease-
management decision making.”

Forms of P in Different Manures and Their Impact on P Runoff and Leaching Losses from Manure Amended Soils: Summary and Implications

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Extension Report Submitted to the Manitoba Livestock and Manure Management Initiative.

Continuous application of manure P at rates that exceed the rate of P removal by crops results in a buildup of soil phosphorus (P). High concentrations of soil P increase the risk of P runoff loss from agricultural land and lead to problems with surface water quality, such as excess algae growth. However, there is little or no information about the effect of applying different sources or types of manure P on the risk of P loss after manure interacts with soil, especially for Prairie soils. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to quantify and compare P losses from soil treated with four sources of liquid swine manure and four sources of solid cattle manure and to relate P runoff and leaching losses to manure P forms and soil test P measurements.

Observations on microbial activity in acidified pig slurry

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Acidification of pig slurry to pH 5.5 is used as a measure to reduce ammonia emission from pits and storages. The slurry is acidified with sulphuric acid in a process tank and pumped back to the slurry pits or to a storage tank. We investigated the effect of acidification on microbial activity. Oxygen consumption rate, methanogenesis and sulphate reduction were all reduced by more than 98% in the stored acidified slurry compared to untreated slurry. Despite higher sulphate concentration, the microbial metabolism was greatly compromised or absent in the acidified slurry. This could be explained by the high concentration of protonized short-chained volatile fatty acids in the acidified slurry (approximately 25 mM, compared to untreated slurry <0.1 mM), which act as an uncoupling agent of the cell membrane potential and thereby arrest microbial metabolism. In total the consequences of slurry acidification are greatly reduced production rates and loss of sulphide and methane, and eliminated loss of ammonia. On the other hand, increased volatilization and loss of smelly fatty acids is to be expected.

For more information the full article can be found at  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/15375110

High bacterial contamination of pig tonsils at slaughter

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The objectives of this work were to (1) study the isolation rate of enteropathogenic Y. enterocolitica, Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp. and L. monocytogenes in the tonsils and feces and (2) determine the number of mesophilic aerobic bacteria (MAB) and Escherichia coli in the tonsils of fattening pigs at slaughter. This is because food-borne zoonoses are infectious diseases of major health and economic significance in developed countries. They are most
often acquired through ingestion of contaminated foods but they can also be acquired directly from animals. The two most frequently reported zoonotic diseases in humans in the EU in 2007 were Campylobacter and Salmonella infections with incidences of 120 and 31 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively (EFSA, 2009). The reason this study uses pig tonsils is because pigs are mostly asymptomatic carriers of Salmonella enterica, Campylobacter spp., Yersinia enterocolitica and L. monocytogenes. All these bacterial pathogens have been isolated from the intestinal
tract of pigs (Fosse et al., in press). However, pathogenic Y. enterocolitica has shown to be a more frequent inhabitant in pig tonsils (Bucher et al., 2008). In the present study, almost all (98%) fattening pigs at slaughter were carriers for at least one of these foodborne pathogens in their tonsils (76%) or were shedding them in feces (72%). Pathogenic Y. enterocolitica and L. monocytogenes were frequently isolated from tonsils while Campylobacter spp. were rarely found. The main reason was because of contamination during slaughter and this study recommends that the contamination in the slaughterhouse could be effectively reduced by changing the slaughter technique by not splitting the head and by leaving the tongue and tonsils in the oral cavity.

For more information the full article can be found at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03091740

A joint test of market power, menu costs, and currency invoicing

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This article developed a theoretical ERPT framework accounting for menu costs and different choices of currency for
invoicing purposes. Menu costs make it costly for exporters to revise their prices in response to exchange rate changes. This introduces a nonlinearity between the exchange rate and the export price. This nonlinearity motivates the empirical specification of a two-regime pass-through model to analyze the pricing decisions of pork exporters from two Canadian provinces to the U.S. and Japan. The choice of currency used for invoicing purposes imposes theoretical restrictions on the pass-through in the first regime (i.e., when menu costs are high relative to the profits arising from a price change) which can be tested empirically. The empirical model rejects the null hypothesis of no menu costs in three of the four equations. Statistically significant menu costs are identified in the export pricing decisions of Quebec and Manitoba exporters in their dealings with U.S. buyers. Manitoba pork exporting firms also appear to face menu costs in their dealings with Japanese buyers. We argue that the nonrejection in the case of the Quebec–Japan ERPT equation is more likely attributable to the small length of our sample than to the actual significance of menu costs faced by Quebec firms. Overall, the empirical evidence favors threshold pass-through models over linear ones.

For more information the full article can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1574-0862/issues