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Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
Sow Welfare Assessment Systems in US, EU and Canada
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Welfare by admin on June 10, 2013 | No Comments
Animal welfare can be hard to quantify, especially for the freedom to express normal behaviour, and the freedom from fear and distress. Output-based measures use animal-based measures in four areas: physiological response, health and injuries, production level, and behaviour. Usually, some combination of these categories is used, as just using one can give an inaccurate assessment. Input-based measures include resource and management-based measures, and can also be considered as they assess the environment and care from the stockperson. Animal-based measures tend to more accurately reflect the actual welfare of an animal, but input-based measures are easier to measure. One system to measure welfare is the European Welfare Quality Program, which puts livestock farms into one of four welfare categories. It scores the farm on the animal-based measures of good health, housing, feeding, and appropriate behaviour from 0-2, and then puts it in the category that corresponds to the points. Another system is the American PQA Plus Program, which is mainly uses input-based measures. It involves 12 practices for swine production, and evaluate 10 of them as acceptable or to develop and implement an action plan. The Canadian ACA Program started as a voluntary program, and is now required as part of the Canadian Quality Assurance program. It is under revision, but the current mandatory requirements are largely management-based. The three programs vary in their approach, but all help to quantify animal welfare and address when it is inadequate.
Building Better Bacon: Genomics Tools for Pork Quality
Posted in: Meat Quality, Pork Insight Articles by admin on | No Comments
Genomics can help breeding for traits by improving accuracy, predicting traits earlier, and for heritable traits that cannot be evaluated in breeding animals – like pork quality. Genomics will allow the evaluation of pork quality with accuracy equivalent to carcass measurements, and allow this to be done shortly after piglet birth. Pork quality consists of heritable traits, so genomics will allow breeding animals to be identified early and set aside. A 60K SNP panel is available to test DNA in pigs and, by comparing traits between pigs with known panels, the genes involved for a specific trait can be found. This requires a very large sample size, so at this point expanding the database of meat quality traits, and using standardized measurements, is important. Current genomic tools are being developed using results from conducting 60K SNP panels and phenotypic measurements on 700 pigs, as well as an additional 700 parents and littermates. At the end of the study, the pigs were slaughtered and a complete meat quality analysis was done, and then markers effects were estimated for traits. The study provided a small, beginning database, which can be expanded and improved to give more accurate estimates. The development of genomics will allow more accurate selection of breeding animals for hard to predict traits like meat quality, and requires the expansion of the current database.
Financial Considerations in Evaluating the Competitiveness of the Canadian Swine- Pork Segment
Posted in: Economics, Pork Insight Articles by admin on June 9, 2013 | No Comments
Past economic analysis of the market predicted that the Canadian pork industry was in a uniquely positive position for expansion and profit, yet the market fell and many producers were not able to make any profit. Examining past analysis from a financial point will hopefully provide some insight for why the market behaved as it did. The Canadian industry usually goes through a four year cycle, but after the low point in 2006 profits failed to rise again. Equity had been increasing 2001-2006, and then after 2006 declined back to around 2001 values. Because of this, producers’ borrowing capacity was vulnerable in 2012. As well, after 2006 both working capital, and earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) declined. General economic analysis does not look at differences between farms, but those with an integrated crop enterprise would have had an advantage. They would be able to transfer input at cost, keep feed prices lower, and contribute to hog returns. However, these operations tend to be smaller, and there are economies of scale within the pork industry. Larger facilities tend to be more specialized, and are more exposed to risk when feed and hog prices are volatile. Overall, these contributions to the profit loss in 2012 should be considered mainly financial ones, and not economic.
Competitiveness in Pork Production – A View From Europe
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The competitiveness of the European pork market allows advancements to take place in welfare, medication use, and improvements in management, sometimes without being driven by government policy. The gestation stall ban in the UK resulted in a 50% reduction in sows, this is not because stall-free doesn’t work, but rather because of the use of cheap methods rather than a proper conversion. The EU recently introduced new stall-free legislature, and the results of doing so will be coming later on. Castration is currently being debated in the EU and tends to be moving away from it. It is outlawed in the UK (though still legal), and the UK has dealt with intact males by reducing maximum slaughter age to 170 days. The use of a farrowing crate is still being debated, but most industry workers and animal rights groups agree there is no current commercially viable alternative. The reduced sow numbers in the UK, and the use of outdoor farrowing may mean that all, or more, sows in the UK will be farrowing outdoors. There is pressure to reduce medicine use in herds, as it can be used to mask underlying management problems. Progress in deterring the spread of swine illnesses and food borne illness to humans is also still lacking. Current opportunities in the industry include the possibility of showing pork as a more sustainable meat option, and industrialization to feed a growing population.
Proudly Presenting…Agriculture
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Farm & Food Care was created to provide advocacy and intelligence, industry programs and outreach, and public trust and outreach. Surveys show Canadians generally do not know about farming practices, but that they are interested in the topic and have a positive view of farmers. Farm & Food Care is working to provide information about farming to the public, and clear up any misconceptions. Some of the ways Farm & Food Care is doing this include “Faces of Farming” (a calendar featuring farmers), farm tours, virtual farm tours for those who can’t access real farms, the publication “The Real Dirt on Farming”, and social media presence and promotions. By becoming part of the community again, agriculture can move forward in unison with the public.
Getting the Message out – Using Social Media
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Traditional media is no longer the most effective way of advertising as new technology displaces it, and it is time to consider using these new technologies to benefit the pork industry. Social media is fast growing, and the most efficient way to reach consumers. Social media can be a valuable tool to get messages about the pork industry to the general public, and consistency, discretion, and engagement can help create a positive experience.
Managing Energy Intake and Costs of Grow-Finish Pigs
Posted in: Energy, Nutrition, Pork Insight Articles by admin on | No Comments
The cost of feed has been rising and while research has focused on amino acid requirements and cost, research on the cost of energy itself has been behind. Energy can come from starch, fat, protein or fibre, but the efficiency varies depending on which source is used to obtain the energy. Energy is used by the pig for either maintenance or growth. Maintenance energy requirement calculations look at Fasting Heat Production, but it is important to remember additional costs like temperature regulation, immune challenges, and social stressors. Growth can be achieved through protein or lipid deposition and, while their efficiencies are similar, lean accretion is much more efficient than fat accretion due to the water requirement. Still, lean pigs are not necessarily the most cost effective if they are gaining weight slowly, as they will require extra barn time and maintenance energy. There are variations between herds in ability to maintain growth rate with lower energy density foods. Generally, herds that are able to increase feed intake to maintain energy intake will maintain growth, and will be desirable continuing into the future.
New NRC (2012) Nutrient Requirements of Swine
Posted in: Nutrition, Pork Insight Articles by admin on | No Comments
The NRC released their new edition of Nutritional Requirements for Swine in 2012, and has made updates to reflect the increase nutritional demand of modern pigs. Like previous editions, the values are based off of mathematical models, and the guide comes with software to run the models on at-home computers. Models were created for grower-finish pigs, gestating sows, and lactating sows. Energy utilization has become even more important due to rising feed costs, and NRC emphasizes the use of net energy in determining energy utilization. Literature reviews provide data for dietary energy of specific ingredients, which differs from the French or Dutch systems. NRC also confirms that energy requirements listed do not take into account environmental and animal variables, and that more accurate energy requirements can be predicted by also using the observed animal performance in a facility. The updated guide has a more complex method of predicting amino acid requirement that uses basal gut losses, skin and hair losses, and minimum urinary N loss. The use of co-products in feed often increases fibre, and as a response NRC published the changing threonine requirement when fibre increases in a diet. As well, the models show the changing amino acid requirements throughout the different stages of gestation and lactation, and information for intact males. Some of the limitation of the NRC values are that it does not incorporate nutritional history, or between-animal variation, and cannot be used for cost-benefit analysis. Overall, NRC has addressed many if the current and upcoming nutritional changes, and remains a valuable tool to estimate nutritional information and requirements.
“How Does a Hypocrite Eat a Pork Chop? With a Fork!”: Advocating for Our Future in a World of Opponents
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Animal rights and welfare groups target consumers by drawing attention to the incongruence of owning pets yet still eating meat, amplify the incongruence through media messages, and proposing their group as a way to alleviate guilt from the incongruence. The majority of Canadians have owned a pet at some point, and commonly will form emotional bonds and anthropomorphize their pet. They also are usually naive to the agricultural practices needed to produce safe, affordable animal food products. When confronted with the difference in treatment between pets and farm animals, a cognitive dissonance can be created. Cognitive dissonance will drive consumers to remove, cope, or change to deal with it. Removal can simply be ignoring the problem, coping uses personal justification, and change involves completely stopping a habit. Animal rights groups will use the cognitive dissonance that exists, and propose a coping mechanism – usually donations or support for inclement changes in the agricultural industry. However, if the agricultural industry can provide a way to cope with cognitive dissonance they will have the advantage. Eating meat is a habit for most people and hard to break, as well, it has nutritional benefit, and is a normal and natural behaviour. If the industry can provide clear rationale for why eating meat is okay, and why industry practices are the way they are, the consumer will be able to cope with cognitive dissonance and resist messages to the contrary.
Performance Metrics in a High Growth Environment
Posted in: Economics, Pork Insight Articles by admin on | No Comments
Metrics help business strategies become a reality, and allow stakeholder performance to be evaluated. Characteristics of successful metrics include cascading the effects, balancing the use of leading and lagging metrics, and streamline the number of metrics used. Shareholder value creation can be measured in multiple ways: return of assets and return on equity are commonly used, but are not great at predicting short-term results, are based on historical measures, and do not evaluate risk. Value per share addresses the flaws of ROE and ROA, and getting an independent valuation performed is a good idea to avoid bias. Shareholder value creation depends on current cash-flow, long-term growth rate, and risk-adjusted discount rate, with the latter two being the most important for business growth. The risk-adjusted discount rate is the cost of capital, and is composed of financial and business risks. As part of a business plan, management should identify metrics with target outcomes, and base the targets off of what will increase shareholder value creation. Metrics are a useful tool for management, and used correctly can help produce results from a proposed business strategy.