BPEX

Pig Development Centre

The Pig Development Centre (PDC) is a strategic partnership between top researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Newcastle, the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) and BPEX. It aims to link academics with pig producers and help restore the UK’s pig industry to its position as a world leader.

The PDC provides the largest facility for pig research, development and knowledge transfer in the country. The centre includes a team of knowledge transfer specialists from BPEX who will be working with the researchers to ensure their work is disseminated to industry and will liaise with farmers to identify issues where research is needed to solve industry problems. The PDC thus creates a continuous chain between strategic research, applied research, development, knowledge transfer and industry uptake.

The centre was officially launched with an event at Leeds University on 6 October 2006 by Shadow Agriculture Minister, James Paice MP. The opening ceremony was chaired by Mark Wilson with other speakers being Mr Stewart Houston, Chairman of BPEX; Professor Margaret Atack, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research from the University of Leeds; Dr Alan Younger from the University of Newcastle; and Professor Stan Done of the VLA on behalf of the PDC. The event was well attended by representatives from all sectors of the pig industry.

This centre has the following mandate:

To conduct and coordinate research and development work of direct relevance to the English pig industry

To implement knowledge transfer that will disseminate best practice to industry and act as a two-way conduit between R&D and industry

To facilitate communication between all members of the pig chain, be they producers, suppliers, processors, retailers

To encourage and coordinate the development of specific training programmes which will equip the English pig industry with competent personnel at all levels

Areas already identified by the centre for research include analysing the benefits of new sire lines, assessing how to manage variations in meat quality without affecting customer demand, ways to reduce the seasonal effects on production for the 40% of pigs produced outdoors in the UK and looking at the best ways to refurbish buildings to improve pig health and performance.