FYI on Swine

The divide between a utopian vision of food production and the realities of modern, large-scale agriculture grew ever wider this week as Worldwatch Institute released a report on global meat production and consumption. Offering little more than a rehash of unsubstantiated claims regarding livestock production, Worldwatch fails to add serious discussion to the debate about food production, and their actions don’t serve the world’s population that are poor and hungry.

An international team of scientists will tackle the challenge of improving feed efficiency in swine through a $5 million grant coordinated by Iowa State University (ISU). The team is also organising a conference on the topic in Omaha in November.

Where in some countries 30 piglets per sow per year is only a distant target, others are already talking about achieving a target of 40.

The National Pork Producers Council is calling it one of the “greatest victories ever for the U.S. pork industry.” South Korea alone could import as much as 5 percent of the United States’ annual pork production.

A 30-day extension of the comment period for the proposed rule on animal disease traceability has been made, the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced. Under the proposed rule, livestock moved interstate would have to be officially identified and accompanied by an interstate certificate of veterinary inspection or other documentation, such as owner-shipper statements or brand certificates, unless specifically exempted. It also encourages the use of low-cost technology and specifies approved forms of official identification for each species, such as metal eartags for cattle.

Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals, which changed the way scientists think about matter. His discovery turned the accepted thinking of the scientific community on its head, drawing him criticism for years before gaining broad acceptance.

Consumers, pinched by falling incomes, trimmed their spending last year even as prices for everyday goods climbed, according to a new report from the Labor Department.

Some call it the smell of money, but Teng Teeh Lim thinks that smell does not have to be so bad. The University of Missouri Extension researcher wants to give large, concentrated animal operations an economical way to lessen those troubling smells. Professor Lim recently received a $50,000 Mizzou Advantage grant to develop a computer model that allows large producers to use the size and other simple information about their swine or dairy farm to give them a better idea of the amount of emissions and what they can do to address odour or emission issues.

Then it comes to selling manure, pork producers need to know their product and understand what their crop-producing customers are looking for. Good negotiating skills can come in handy, too, according to a panel of manure brokers who fielded questions at the recent North American Manure Expo in Norfolk, NE.

ohn Morrell & Co, part of the giant Smithfield Foods group, is to pay a $162,500 civil fine for undervaluing pig carcases and falsifying records at slaughterhouses in Sioux Falls and Sioux City, Iowa. The company has said the underpayments were a mistake that is is working to put right.

A new report from the US Government Accountability Office has called for government and food industry bodies to track the effectiveness of policies to curb antibiotic resistance, including FDA's voluntary strategy designed to reduce antibiotic use in food animals. The GAO has called on the authorities to identify potential approaches for collecting detailed data on antibiotic use in food animals, including the species in which antibiotics are used and the purpose for their use, as well as the costs, time frames, and potential trade-offs associated with each approach.

The animal health business within the global health market is changing with pharmaceutical giants considering selling their veterinary arm due to lower sales and more regulatory restrictions. When a friend of mine swapped his veterinary job for one in human healthcare, I told him he was simply following the latest fashion. The top directors of several big pharmaceutical corporations have been recently suggesting, again, that they might concentrate on the human side and end their interest in animal health products.

Currency rates bear watching, both for the effect they have on trade volume as well as for what they tell us about the global economy, write Steve Meyer and Len Steiner.

U.S. inspectors on Monday started using more sensitive tests to detect antibiotics in pork, part of a stepped-up effort to ensure meat safety after a government report last year suggested consumers might be at risk from harmful drug residues. USDA officials say the new tests will expand the number of antibiotics they can detect in pork, and that the agency can withhold meat with too much antibiotic residue from the market. More contaminated meat "will consequently be removed from the food supply," said USDA spokesman Dirk Fillpot.

In a hearing yesterday before the House Committee on Agriculture's Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry, several producers and an economist testified about the challenges meat and poultry producers are facing in terms of feed availability.

As the quantity of Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS) increased in pig rations so has the concern over fat quality. It is well known that the use of DDGS increases the amount of unsaturated fat in rations. This has the potential to negatively influence carcass fat quality since carcass fat composition is affected by the type of fat in the diet.

One of the major features of The Maschhoffs family run pig business could be that its philosophy revolves around being thrifty. Examples can be found everywhere – instead of using expensive custom-built trucks to haul sows around the Carlyle farmstead, modified redundant yellow school buses are being used.

Some European countries have more specialised their pig production, resulting in huge differences of productivity in the pig units, for instance between Denmark (15.1 hours/sow/year) and France (21.3 hours/sow/year).

With the economy improving, John was thrilled to see his small company starting to boom. With all the new business, John was so busy signing new accounts and training his new staff members, he delegated the bookkeeping responsibilities to a long-time employee he trusted. As time passed, John started noticing discrepancies in the business’ account and discovered the employee had been embezzling money from the company. Unfortunately, embezzlement is not uncommon and is often difficult to detect. What could John have done differently to prevent this kind of problem?