Look Out For
New A4P
New Action for Productivity sheets looking at Farrowing Paddock Management, Heat Detection, Timing of Service and Semen Storage.
Outlook Conference
Outlook 2010, A Changing Climate? is jointly hosted by BPEX and EBLEX and takes place on Wednesday, April 14, at One Great George Street, Westminster.
Love Pork Activity
Love Summer Love Pork Activity to be announced shortly
Marketing News
Meat Management Awards
Entries into these awards were judged this week by a team of industry experts. BPEX have supported this activity by providing the judging facilities and a representative for the judging panel. One of the categories is Best Pork or Pork Product, which includes ham, sausages, fresh cuts, bacon, black pudding or ready meal. The results of the judging will be announced at the Meat Management Industry Awards on June 9th in London. For more information contact [email protected]
The Bacon Butty competition created lots of interest in the LovePork Facebook page, which resulted in +7,000 friends all talking about bacon and pork. This now gives us a ready audience to talk to about future consumer campaigns
The Anton video was promoted on 23 foodie and lifestyle websites and has resulted in almost 60,000 video plays to date.
Four university catering managers visited Plantation Pigs recently with the aim to introduce them to their supply chain before a launch of farm assured pork and farm assured pork products at Winchester University at the start of May. University Caterer Magazine is following the story with more universities expected to follow suit.
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Knowledge Transfer
Tip of the Week: Night Checks
Have you run through a series of night check scenarios with your staff recently? It is important to have some clear strategies on dealing with different farrowing problems depending on who does the night check. Dealing with unsettled sows, mastitis and sows requiring assistance should be reviewed with new and existing members of staff. Also discuss when to assist and when to provide the farrowing tool box of drugs. Discuss with your vet and all staff at the next vet visit.
The 8th Edition of Animal Bytes – Pigs and Sheep – is now available. If you have not already viewed the February issue of Animal Bytes please take a look at the incisive ‘bytes’ of information. Animal Bytes is a website whose objective is to provide short and incisive ‘bytes’ of information on topical themes and current research within the field of UK Animal Science.
Genetics and Leadership
An evening meal and presentation on genetics by PIC’s Sue Corning kicked off the second session of the BPEX Professional Manager Development Scheme (PMDS). Sue discussed the selection process for commonly used genetics and gave some ideas for the future.
The next day’s training included a review of a management survey carried out by delegates on their units. Some interesting results gave everybody food for thought, now they know what their teams think of them! Course leader Alistair Gibb of Cedar Associates kept up the pace with a number of practical exercises providing valuable lessons in leading a team, not to mention much amusement. Delegates probably never expected to be designing nail dryers, self-propelled vehicles, impersonating Scottish men/sergeant majors or doing voice-overs but everybody took part in the challenges with lots of enthusiasm.
Storage and use of semen was also discussed, particularly dealing with extreme weather conditions. Importantly, all went back to their units with plenty of ideas on ways to further improve both team leadership and pig management.
In Ten Year’s Time . . .
Nuffield Scholar and BPEX Knowledge Transfer Manager Helen Thoday has started a blog on the NPA website. She has set out to answer the question: what will we look like in ten years’ time?
By looking at global growth, niche successes and failures and future feeding strategies and likely changes in legislation for pigs, is it possible to understand what the United Kingdom pig industry will look like in ten years time? This BPEX/Merial Nuffield Scholarship will provide me with the opportunity to travel to North America to understand some of the recent problems they have experienced especially in some so-called ‘commodity niche’ markets, which include omega-3 pork. I also intend visiting expanding countries such as China and Brazil to find out what efficiencies they are embracing to turn 50 percent of the world’s pork production from back-yard production to low-cost efficiency.
I would like this Nuffield to be a two-way project. Just ask me if there are things you would like me to specifically investigate on behalf of the industry whilst I’m out and about. That’s what I’m there for! Click here to E-mail Helen.
Piglet Survival Workshops
Dr. Emma Baxter from the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) will lead three BPEX workshops on ‘The Future of Piglet Management’. Emma has a wealth of practical knowledge about neonatal piglet survival and livestock housing systems that optimise animal welfare – on both indoor and outdoor units. The workshop will focus firstly on understanding piglet viability factors for improving management and performance. Part two will look at the future of farrowing systems. What are the criteria for an optimal farrowing system for both sow and piglets and how does this work in practice without compromising welfare and outcome?
The workshops will feature an interactive quiz and are PIPR registered. They are open for all producers, managers and stock people and there will be a hot fork buffet.
Dates:
6.00pm for 6.30pm prompt start. Finish 9pm.
Tuesday 20th April 2010 – The Croft Hotel, Darlington, DL2 2ST
Wednesday 21st April 2010 – The Feathers Hotel, Pocklington, YO42 2AH
Tuesday 27th April 2010 – The Crown Hotel, Borougbridge, YO51 9LB
To register contact Lis Ravn on 07891 656784 or e-mail Lis Ravn.
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National News:
Anaerobic Digestion Help
Businesses and local authorities are being offered help to turn food, farm and other organic waste into energy and fuel.
Defra has published a plan to boost biogas production from anaerobic digestion to help tackle climate change and produce renewable energy.
‘Accelerating the Uptake of Anaerobic Digestion in England: an Implementation Plan’ sets out actions to help businesses, local authorities, farmers and food producers to adopt the technology, which transforms organic material like manure and waste food into fuel. For more information, click here.
A training grant worth £450 will be offered to 670 women working in male dominated environmental and land-based industries in England from April 2010.
The new funding, which will see Lantra’s Women and Work programme in its fourth year, will continue to enable women in industries, such as agriculture, to access funding for a variety of skills development activities.
Women and Work Programme Manager, Lyndsay Bird, said: “The achievement of the programme over the first three years has been outstanding. Our Skills Coaches have worked with over 850 companies helping 2,400 women to benefit from the programme and we look forward to helping even more during the next 12 months.”
Lantra celebrated the end of the third phase of the programme by holding its first Women and Work Awards, which recognised some of the sectors most inspirational and driven women change their lives, careers and businesses.
Women and Work Champion and Deputy Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Prosser OBE, presented the awards and said: “This has been an enjoyable and inspirational event. It was very heartening to meet so many women who have the determination to move forward and see how Women and Work has helped them fulfil their ambitions.”
Women and Work Agriculture Learner of the Year, Andrea Jones, accessed Women and Work to improve her tractor driving skills and learn about DIY artificial insemination as Andrea’s husband’s business partner and brother, Hugh, is retiring next year leaving just John to run the farm. Andrea said: “We can’t afford to take on any more than one additional worker when Hugh leaves, so my newly acquired skills are very important to help keep us going.”
For more information or to register your interest click here or call 0845 707 8007.
A serious case of selenium toxicity is reported which resulted in many paralysed pigs but where the food chain was protected.
A case of necrotising rhinitis, tonsillitis and necrotising hepatitis not inconsistent with Aujeszky’s disease was investigated and once this Notifiable Disease was eliminated it was demonstrated that lesions seen were due to PCV2 associated disease.
The continued low incidence of PMWS and PCV2 associated disease is reported and thought to be directly related to the introduction of PCV2 vaccines.
PRRS remains the most important disease of pigs in GB with concerns that an American vaccine derived strain may be introduced into the UK via weaners.
The incidence of swine dysentery continues to rise and is of major concern, given that during 2008 and 2009 multiple resistant strains of Brachyspira hyodysenteriae were identified.
To see the report, click here.
LandSkills Moves On
LandSkills West Midlands, has been running since May 2009 and is now changing the way in which the programme is being delivered, making the process for accessing funding easier and more flexible for the remaining two years of the project, whilst giving us the ability to promote further collaborative and partnership working and encouraging small groups and organisations to come forward and apply.
LandSkills West Midlands will be establishing a ‘Framework Panel’ of organisations. These organisations will co-ordinate, procure and develop training and technology transfer programmes that will meet the demands and needs of farmers, growers and foresters in the West Midlands region.
There is £3 million available to members of the new Framework Panel to fund these activities.
Organisations that would like to apply to join the Framework Panel must request the information pack BEFORE 5.00 pm on April 13th 2010. This allows 10 working days to request the information pack and therefore register your initial interest. This is the only opportunity to become involved. If you miss this deadline, you will not be included in the following closed application process to be part of the Framework Panel. Following the above deadline, there will be 20 working days to complete and return the information pack by those who have registered.
To register your interest please e-mail LandSkills or write to Craig Taylor at Lantra, Lantra House, Coventry, CV8 2LG.
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International News:
US Pig Figures Fall
USDA’s quarterly Hogs and Pigs survey on Friday reported fewer U.S. hogs overall, fewer kept for breeding and fewer kept for marketing than analysts had predicted.
It also reported fewer hog farrowings and a smaller pig crop from December through February, as well as predicting fewer farrowings going forward through August.
As Paragon Economics President Steve Meyer put it, "A long stream of boring Hog and Pig reports came to a screeching halt with this report."
Analysts on a post-report call sponsored by the Pork Board agreed Friday’s number could skyrocket hog futures prices on Monday and will very likely end sow culling.
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Livestock Emissions Questioned
A new report has called into question the validity of the comparison in the UN’s Livestock’s Long Shadow that agriculture is responsible for more emissions than transport.
Report author Frank Mitloehner from the University of California at Davis said curbing meat production and consumption would be less beneficial for the climate than has been claimed. Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries."
He pointed out the authors had not calculated transport emissions in the same way as those from livestock, instead just using the IPCC’s figure, which only included fossil fuel burning.
"This lopsided ‘analysis’ is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue," he said.
One of the authors of Livestock’s Long Shadow, FAO livestock policy officer Pierre Gerber, said he accepted Dr Mitlohner’s criticism.
"I must say honestly that he has a point – we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn’t do the same thing with transport," he said.
Benefits of Eating Meat
In the wake of increasing evidence of poor consumer diets, Copa-Cogeca wants to highlight the
huge nutritional benefits to consumers of eating meat.
Speaking in Brussels, Copa-Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen said: “Meat provides
extremely valuable sources of protein, energy, minerals and vitamins to a consumers diet. With
increasing evidence of poor consumer diets, it is more important than ever to promote the
benefits of eating meat, in order to help consumers live a healthier and longer life. It is also
essential to maintain livestock production across the EU, in view of predictions from the FAO
that world food production needs to be more than doubled by 2050 in order to meet growing
demand”.
To see the full report, click here.
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