Pig producers considers stopping castration.

 Pig producers considers  stopping  castration.

10 pig producers’ organisations in Western France are considering to stop castrating piglets as from December 31, 2021.

 The organisations represent a respectable part of the country’s producers. The proposal of the 10 organisations is a reaction to a decision by Didier Guillaume, France’s minister for agriculture and food.His aim is to improve animal welfare in France’s pig industry and one of his measures is that, after 2021, castration will only be allowed when anesthetics are applied.


 The intention is that the basis price for pigs will be adjusted. The collectives feel that gilts as well as entire boars will form the reference for pig prices as from 2021.

 The slaughterhouses will become the place for checks whether or not carcasses will have boar taint, these could be detected by sniffing at the slaughter line by humans. Additional costs of these checks will be carried jointly by the pig farms that stopped castrating.

PIG CASTRATION: EXPERT OPINION.

Surgical castration is a painful husbandry procedure performed on piglets within the first week of life to improve meat quality. In the United States alone, approximately 94 million piglets will be castrated on an annual basis.

 Castration of piglets in Nigeria is common procedure on pig farms and the purpose is to remove boar taint from the pork, reduce fighting's within the pens and also hasten growth of the piglets..

 This procedure is carried out at an early stage but analgesic is provided. There is a school of thought advocating castration or no castration, this group wants your take on why you castrate and under what conditions do you castrate.

 Piglet castration is an ambiguous practice – on one side nobody likes it, yet stopping the practice or offering pain relief appears difficult to achieve in many countries. Health and welfare expert Dr Monique Pairis-Garcia and her colleagues at North Carolina State University would like to understand why – and are looking for your experiences and motives.

 Give your reasons, share your views let the international community understand your practice here.

SWILL FEEDING AND PIG PRODUCTION CHAIN.

( food waste). Swill refers to cooked food given to pigs.Pigs consume almost anything,and are great feed converters turning feed into muscle fast.Feed costs and efficiency has pushed the stakes high on alternative feed sources that will provide necessary nutrition requirements but also ensure optimum growth.Swill benefits not only farmer’s wallets, but also the environment, as farmers replace grain- and soybean-based feeds with swill, they reduce demand for these land- and greenhouse gas-intensive feeds. Pigs are usually fed a formulated ration in most pig farms,while others provide a combination of various feed components to achieve the same aim of growth at stipulated pace.Pigs are sometimes fed kitchen waste ,which is the common practice in small scale production,but the practice has gained more acceptance now even on large scale production because of the potential to reduce production costs. Swill is currently illegal in the EU,many developing countries still practice this with good feedback.The only caution in the practice is to cook the food properly so as to kill pathogens.The risks of feeding uncooked food waste were demonstrated in 2001 when a UK farmer illegally fed some to pigs, precipitating the 2001 FMD outbreak, which cost the UK economy £8 billion (€ 10.4 billion). In response, swill-feeding was banned in the UK in 2001, with the ban extended across the EU the following year. While the EU saw swill only as a disease risk, other nations saw it as a potential resource. Heat treatment deactivates viruses such as FMD and Classical Swine Fever (hog cholera) and renders food waste safe for animal feed. In the same year that the UK banned the use of swill, the Japanese government launched an initiative to promote the regulated use of food waste in animal feed. Japan and South Korea recycle around 40% of their food waste as feed which is a waste-resource innovation, as swill is seen as a strategic resource. It is a cheap, domestic alternative to the more expensive, volatile grain- and soybean-based feeds. Pigs reared on food waste produce pork of high quality , although swill-fed pigs tend to grow more slowly than when fed conventional, grain-based feed. The swill has a more variable nutritional content thus the costs of slower growth are more than offset by the savings in feed costs.

HOW TO LOWER OCCURRENCE OF BOAR TAINT.

Boars in the value chain have always resulted in tainted pork, which not many people can tolerate.There has been several interventions such as artificial insemination and using castrated males in the chain to reduce the taint,but the success rate has not been high,resulting in more research. Research from the Netherlands are about to publish an extensive research towards the reduction of boar taint when raising and using and entire males in the food chain.The study termed: How to lower occurrence of boar taint. The paper, to be published in the Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences (NJAS) is a summary of a comprehensive study by scientists from various disciplines, attached to the Agricultural Economic Institute (Wageningen UR), Wageningen UR Livestock Research, Vion Fresh Meat and Topigs Research Center IPG. Four themes were aimed at in the research programme: 1)Sensory evaluation of meat from entire male pigs. 2)Preventive measures to reduce boar taint prevalence.3)Accuracy of detection for boar taint.4) The relationship between farm management characteristics and levels of mounting and aggressive behaviour of boars.Using observational and experimental studies data were collected in various segments of the pork supply chain.The researchers conclude that ranking AI boars on their genomic breeding values for low boar taint resulted in a reduction in boar taint prevalence of 40%.The skatole level is lower in boars fed via a long trough than in boars fed by a single space feeder. Few eating places, restricted feeding, a low level of amino acids in the diet, insufficient water supply of the drinking system, illness of the pigs, a suboptimal climate and fear for humans were associated with a higher level of sexual and aggressive behaviour and more skin lesions. A partly open pen wall, clean pens and pigs, wider gaps of the slats, feeding by a long trough, and feeding wet by-products were associated with less sexual and aggressive behaviour and less skin lesions. Having more than 30 animals per pen was associated with a higher probability of high boar taint prevalence levels. Hygienic conditions were associated with lower boar taint prevalence levels. Assessing similarity of the rank order comparison between consumer perception and three selected boar taint detection parameters for the consumer perception attribute odour of meat resulted in the highest Kendall's W values for the human nose scores.In conclusion, boar tainted meat was rated as less pleasant by consumers compared to meat of gilts and non-tainted boar meat, indicating the need of detection as a safety net at the slaughter line. Breeding was an effective preventive measure to reduce boar taint. Farms with appropriate management, feeding and housing conditions have reduced levels of mounting and aggressive behaviour. Human nose scores were a better predictor of the rank order of consumer perception, compared to skatole levels and to androstenone levels. read more here;http://www.pigprogress.net/Growing-Finishing/Management/2016/1/Study-How-to-lower-occurrence-of-boar-taint-2740440W/

FOOD SECURITY AND SYNTHETIC FOOD.

Synthetic versions of beef, cheese and mayonnaise are being developed in the home of the biggest technology companies in the world, the Silicon Valley, California.Primary producers need to think about how to position their product in the market in competition with synthetic food, according to a new report released by the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand Council. The council's Peter O'Reagan said primary producers should be aware of up and coming technology that may one day present competition to their product."They are using natural products because they are using chickpeas and soybeans.It has the potential to solve a lot of food shortage problems.The innovation has also caught the eye of local academics. Read more here;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-30/synthetic-food-silicon-valley/6899350

Meat groups reassure consumers about antibiotics

Meat groups reassure consumers about antibiotics