Consumer knowledge and meat consumption at home and away from home

Posted in: Economics by admin on January 1, 2008 | No Comments

This study examines whether or not dietary knowledge affects consumption of beef, pork, poultry, and fish at home differently from it does consumption away from home. It is found that dietary knowledge decreases consumption of beef and pork at home and away from home but does not affect poultry or fish consumption in either location. Men eat more meat and fish than women, meat consumption declines with age, and regional and racial/ethnic differences are present.

When markets move to extremes, fallout is assured and business fatalities become a reality.

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Norlin Gutz has been raising hogs for over 35 years. “I was buying pigs on the open market. Whenever my feed distributor had a finishing tloor come open, I would place the pigs, he would get the feed business and 1 could make a little money, That’s how I got started,” Gutz explains. In 2001, Gutz bought a 1,200-sow unit with a nursery and a house north of Albert Gity, IA. It had set empty for three years,” he notes. “Our costs were below the industry
average. Weaning averages were running at about 9.3 pigs/litter. Even when costs began escalating, our costs were
still below $34/pig. Our facility costs were very low,” he says. The situation took a bad turn in the summer of 2007, however, as Canadians began sending more pigs to the area and pig prices dropped to about $10. In late February, Gutz bad 12,000 pigs on feed on sites that were old and not very efficient, but they were all that was available.
In early March, the local banker that carried the loan asked Gutz to form a liquidation plan. He did. The last sows
farrowed the first week of lune. The unit closes down a month later. Worse yet, Gutz is trying to find positions for eight employees – all hired through the worker exchange program, Gommunicating for Agriculture. “I don’t know where the situation in the livestock business will lead. It has upset the whole structure of the industry. A year to 18 months down the road. I think there will be some terrible consequences for jobs that are related to the livestock industry — especially in Iowa where we are so tied to the livestock industry,” he says. “As for my future, we are still sorting that out. I doubt I will be involved with hogs. It would be hard to get involved again once your heart has been broken.”

Using movement sensors to detect the onset of farrowing

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Over the past few decades, in order to optimise sow fertility research in the field of animal reproduction has focused mainly on ovulation and pregnancy rates. During each farrowing, however, an average of one piglet is lost due to problems in the process of parturition, and an additional piglet is lost within a few days after birth (Edwards, 2002). Therefore, focusing research on farrowing is not only economically important but it can improve the health and welfare of the dam and her offspring. Problems during and shortly after parturition can seriously compromise animal health and can have an effect on the production economy of the pig farms. In modern pig herds, the lack of surveillance at farrowing is a current problem. Increased intensity of pig production has inevitably raised challenges during farrowing. Large litter sizes may result in delivery problems often associated with dystocia (Smith, 1997). Also, in large litters some of the piglets are more likely to be weaker and to require assistance soon after birth. Parturition should therefore be closely supervised in order to minimise losses due to problems with sows or piglets. Some studies have demonstrated that human supervision at farrowing can halve the piglet perinatal mortality (Holyoake et al., 1995; White et al., 1996). However, constant human supervision of all the farrowing sows has not been considered feasible, due to the high cost of labour and the working hours required. Currently, research is being carried out in the field of automatic growth control of pigs (Parsons et al., 2007). However, systems for automatically detecting farrowing do not exist today. Prediction of the onset of farrowing with a degree of accuracy could improve herd management and consequently improve the supervision of parturition. In sows, certain physiological and behavioural parameters are clear signals of impending parturition. Some of these parameters have been studied around farrowing, including the rise in body temperature (King et al., 1972; Elmore et al., 1979), the rise in respiratory rate (Hendrix et al., 1978) and behavioural changes (Hartsock and Barczewski, 1997; Bradshaw and Broom, 1999). All these changes occur 24–36h before farrowing starts. Thus, monitoring the variation in these parameters during the last days of pregnancy could likely serve to predict the onset of farrowing. One of the clearest signals of approaching farrowing is the increased activity due to nest building behaviour. Hartsock and Barczewski (1997) found that rooting, pawing, turning and walking behaviour in sows kept in pens or crates begins to increase 24h prior to farrowing. Therefore, the aim of our study was to test different movement sensors to measure changes in the farrowing-related activity of crated sows. These sensors could also be used to develop an automatic alarm system to help farmers to predict the onset of parturition. This would allow for more effective work organisation, reduce losses due to farrowing complications and weak piglets, and thus improve animal welfare. On the 764 farms included in the national litter-recording scheme in Finland, total piglet mortality averaged 22.4% (the mortality of liveborn piglets was 13.9%) in 2001 (Sternberg, 2002). For sows, 2768 treatment cases for farrowing problems on 942 farms included in the health recording scheme were recorded that same year (Rautala, 2002). Moreover, 15.4% of all veterinary treatments in the herds participating in the scheme were due to post partum dysgalactia syndrome (PPDS).

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

A meta-analysis on experimental infections with porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2)

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A meta-analysis was performed with the aim to identify factors with a relevant influence on the expression of clinical
postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) under experimental conditions. It was found the most successful animal experiment aimed to develop PMWS should include: (1) colostrum-deprived pigs, (2) age of inoculation below 3 weeks, (3) high doses of PCV2 inoculum, (4) PCV2 strain from genotype 1, and (5) co-infection with another swine pathogen as a triggering factor.

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

Visual acuity of pigs at different light intensities

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In most West European countries pigs are housed indoors under low-light conditions. While former
Dutch National legislation for pigs required 12 lx for 8 h per day, EU legislation requires 40 lx, so pigs
should be able to distinguish small objects and subtle visual signals. However, limited scientific evidence
exists about the effects of light intensity (illumination) and object size on the pigs’ ability to distinguish
visual cues. We studied these two effects using operant conditioning with a Landolt-C symbol as shape
discriminator. Four Landolt-C symbols with different sizes (with gaps of, respectively, 10 mm(L10), 20 mm
(L20), 30 mm (L30) and 40 mm (L40)) were tested under 8 different illuminant levels (0.5, 3, 6, 12, 20, 30,
40 and 80 lx). Following a 4-week training period, 20 female 4-month-old pigs were tested in two batches
and the numbers of correct, hesitant and incorrect choices were recorded. Reduced illumination significantly
increased the number of incorrect choices (P < 0.05). Symbol size also had a significant effect (P < 0.001);
pigs made more mistakes with the two smaller symbols L10 (41.5%) and L20 (28.6%) compared to the
bigger symbols L30 (17.3%) and L40 (16.3%). Furthermore, pigs hesitated less with the smallest symbol
L10 (4.5%) compared to L20, L30 and L40 (17.3, 22.3 and 23.0%, respectively; P < 0.001). Visual acuity
(ability to distinguish details and shapes) varied from 0.001 to 0.03 and pigs failed to discriminate visual
cues below 20 mm. Results indicate that the detail of the visual cue (symbol size) has a more pronounced
effect on the pigs’ ability to distinguish visual cues, compared to the illuminant level.

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

The effects of feeding rice in substitution of corn and the degree of starch gelatinization of rice on the digestibility of dietary components and productive performance of young pigs

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A 28-d trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of the main cereal of the diet (corn or rice), heat processing (HP) of rice, and the degree of starch gelatinization (SG) of rice on apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of dietary components and productive performance of pigs weaned at 25 d of age. It was found that feeding rice improved performance of weanling pigs, and HP of rice under mild conditions enhanced diet digestibility and productive performance of pigs. Severe processing of rice increased the degree of SG but did not further improve diet digestibility or growth performance.

Digestion of carbohydrates and utilization of energy in sows fed diets with contrasting levels and physicochemical properties of dietary fiber

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This research paper investigates the digestion of carbohydrates and utlization of energy in sows fed diets with different levels and physicochemical properties of dietary fibre (DF). It was shown that the DF level influenced the ileal flow of most nutrients, in particular carbohydrates. Feeding HF diets resulted in greater CH4 production, which was related to the amount of carbohydrates and OM fermented in the large intestine, but with no difference in heat production.

Intestinal metabolism of weaned piglets fed a typical United States or European diet with or without supplementation of tributyrin and lactitol

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The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a supplementation diet, composed of tributyrin and lactitol (TL), and a standard diet without growth promotors (EU). Then the effects were compared with a standard US diet. It was concluded that the US diet had a greater effect on growth performance and mucosal trophic status than EU diets, the supplementation with slowly released TL seemed to be an effective tool to partially overcoming the adverse effects of vegetable protein diets.

Feeding flaxseed to sows during late-gestation and lactation affects mammary development but not mammary expression of selected genes in their offspring

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Mammary gland
composition and mammary gene expression were measured in pubertal gilts whose dam were fed a control (CTL) diet or a
diet with a 10% supplement of flaxseed (FS) during late-gestation and throughout lactation. Parenchymal weight
expressed as a percentage of body weight tended to be greater in offspring from FS compared with CTL sows (P<0.1) and to contain less fat (P<0.1). Offspring from FS sows had more parenchymal protein, whether expressed as a percentage (P<0.05) or total amount in tissue (P¡Ü0.05), than offspring from CTL sows. No changes (P>0.1) in mammary gland
expression of the studied genes were observed with dietary treatment.

Optimum duration of performance tests for evaluating growing pigs for growth and feed efficiency traits

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The optimum duration of test for the measurement of ADG, ADFI, feed:gain ratio and residual feed intake was examined in growing pigs. The results indicated that for growing pigs under good nutrition and ad libitum feeding, a 28-
day test was adequate for the measurement of feed intake, whereas a 35-day test was required to measure ADG,
feed:gain ratio, and residual feed intake without compromising the accuracy of measurement.