Introduction: During slaughtering procedure, every animal should be unconscious chiefly to avoid inflicting undue pain during bleeding. Exsanguination without prior stunning is an extremely controversial practice from the standpoint of animal welfare because some animals take a long time to lose brain function. CO 2 stunning can be reversible or irreversible; pigs may recover consciousness before dying, such that the time between stunning and exsanguination is a...
Introduction: In Germany farmers are legally obligated to monitor animal welfare indicators, and based on that, improve their conditions. Besides the difficulties in defining indicators, the comparable assessment is another challenge. Therefore in the poultry industry, camera systems have been installed in slaughterhouses to evaluate the foot pad condition with a software. The results are open to farmers as feedback and partly to veterinary departments. Such a system has...
John Carr (Apiam Animal Health/James Cook University) talks about his ideas on the farms of the future, during this Swine It interview with host Laura Greiner....
Steve Pollmann (independent consultant, DSP Consulting) discusses spacing, summer weight loss, castration and feed costs, in this Engormix interview....
Introduction: Consumers and important trade markets value meat without residues of antimicrobials. Preventive actions taken by the vet and the farmer are therefore essential to prevent presence of residues. This includes careful registration of use of antimicrobials, marking of treated animals, and compliance with withdrawal periods. Moreover, surveillance (own check and official samples) is needed to detect enough cases to encourage compliance. To identify causality,...
Introduction: Slaughter line observations can be included in breeding values of breeding pigs to enhance animal welfare. By monitoring lesions/remarks on joints, lungs, hearts and other parts of the carcasses, clear differences between farms and individual pigs can be demonstrated. Lesions like bursitis, pericarditis and pneumonia indicate lower welfare of the animals. Higher incidences of these lesions are associated with lower average daily gain. These lesions are...
Introduction: Pork head meat, cheek meat, lymph nodes, and other carcass by-products may become contaminated with Salmonella in pork slaughter facilities. In a preliminary survey, a large pork processing plant in the United States was sampled bimonthly from January to July of 2015 to determine the prevalence, seasonality, and serotype diversity of Salmonella enterica (SE) isolated from cheek meat and head trim of swine carcasses. Materials and...
Introduction Increasing use of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), which contains high levels of unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) such as n-6 UFA, alters the fatty acid (FA) profile of tissues in pigs to contain more UFA with a higher iodine value (IV) that results in soft fat pork (Cromwell et al., 2011; McClelland et al., 2012). Also, increased deposition of n-6 UFA in tissues may result in increased oxidative problems for both the health of pigs...
Introduction: Production diseases usually originate from a complex interaction of pathogens, animal genetics and environment. They compromise animal health and welfare, can reduce product quality and increase environmental footprint of pig production and the use of antimicrobials. Production diseases impact farm economy and can result in loss of revenues and extra production costs. However, very limited synthesis on economic impacts of production diseases is available. The goal...
Introduction: Euthanasia of pigs on farms is a common and inevitable process for the well-being of the animals. The American Association of Swine Veterinarians along with the American Veterinary Medical Association set guidelines for appropriate euthanasia techniques based on the size and age of a pig. Piglet euthanasia presents a considerable challenge due to the general lack of body fat, small size, and difficult handling. There are limited methods to effectively...
Introduction: Research has documented that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) reduce pain and pain related behaviors in piglets. The use of analgesics at the time of piglet processing increases the amount of piglet handling and injections as well as increases the labor for the producer. The ability to give an injection of an NSAID at the same time as an iron product (compounded) would help minimize animal handling and labor. The objective of this study was to...
Frédéric Vangroenweghe (Elanco Animal Health) speaks on the tests and application of an enzyme (Hemicell HT™) and its economic benefits by lowering feeding costs while maintaining quality, during IPVS2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil....
INTRODUCTION The swine slaughtering process is affected by practices that go from the establishment of fasting on the farm to the slaughtering stage in the slaughterhouse. Animals are subjected to practices that will directly reflect on the quality of their carcass, and on how meat cuts will be ranked as more or less valuable in the market. Thus, pre-slaughter phases are fundamentally relevant to the quality of the final product, once they affect the living experience of animals...
1. Introduction The global demand and industrial production of pork and pork products are increasing. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) statistics, worldwide swine production has increased steadily from 1961 to 2007, with Asia the continent with the highest production with around 50% of the total worldwide production. Between 2007 and 2017, production increased significantly in Asia and remained as the highest swine producers (almost...
Seasonal variation in pig production has been implicated in variation in productive and reproductive performance through direct and indirect effects of temperature on physiological responses, including intestinal integrity, endocrine signaling, adipose mobilization, and insulin regulation. Heat stress in pig production results in industry losses resulting from slower growth rates, inconsistent market weights, altered carcass traits, infertility, increased health care costs and mortality. For...
INTRODUCTION For any technology to gain industry-wide adoption, it must provide value to all segments of the industry and have minimal associated risks. Immunological castration (Improvest, Zoetis Inc., Kalamazoo, MI, GnRF analog-diphtheria toxoid conjugate ) provides an effective alternative to physical castration for reducing boar odor of intact male pigs while improving lean deposition compared with physically castrated ( PC ) barrows. The effects...
Introduction. Variation in live weight in growing pigs causes a number of problems for producers and results in significant economic loss. However, it is important to bear in mind that biological variation exists for a reason. It is the foundation of natural and artificial selection and as such is the basis for genetic improvement in performance traits. In addition, even if we could minimize all of the genetic and environmental causes of such...
Introduction An ideal technique for the measurement of body growth and composition in livestock animals is noninvasive, non-destructive, accurate, easy to perform and applicable to a wide range of ages and body weights (Ferrell & Cornelius, 1984). Non-invasive, also known as non-destructive, techniques allow tissue changes in the same animal to be followed to study development over different stages. However,...