American Meat Institute releases pork plant video

American Meat Institute has released a video tour of a pork slaughter plant hosted by leading animal welfare expert Temple Grandin, Ph.D., professor of animal science at Colorado State University. The video is available on the Institute's dedicated animal welfare website.
Also released with the video was a print companion brochure that may be downloaded from AnimalHandling.org.  Single copies also are available upon request from the AMI. The pork plant video tour and brochure augment the beef plant video tour, also hosted by Grandin, which was released in August 2012. Since its release, the beef plant video has been viewed nearly 50,000 times on line and in countless classrooms and other settings.
The latest pork video tour starts on the farm in a finishing barn, depicts pig loading on trailers, unloading at the plant, stunning of pigs to make them insensible to pain, which is required by law, the bleeding process, carcass chilling and fabrication of carcasses into cuts that consumers eat. The video details the widespread use of the American Meat Institute animal welfare audit, developed by Grandin for the industry in 1997, and now a global standard.
Grandin selected the two plants that are featured in the video as representative of typical beef and pork slaughter plants. She was on-site for the taping and narrated the videos in her own words.
"I'm really pleased the American Meat Institute is working on putting these videos out because I think we need to show people what's done in the industry when it's just done right in a typical large plant," Grandin says in the introduction to the video. The brochure also includes a series of commonly asked questions about animal welfare with answers provided by Dr. Grandin.
"We recognize that many consumers want more information about how livestock are handled and processed in U.S. meat and poultry plants.  Our Glass Walls Project is an effort to increase transparency," said American Meat Institute Senior Vice President of Public Affairs and Member Services Janet Riley, who also serves at liaison to the Institute's Animal Welfare Committee. "We were fortunate that Dr. Grandin, a leading expert on animal handling and welfare in meat plants, agreed to host the video tours and played such a pivotal role in their production. We are proud to offer an honest look inside our plants and to show the public our long-standing commitment to ensuring optimal livestock welfare."

UK pig processor launches campaign to boost pig meat sales

Vion Food Group, one of the UK’s leading food manufacturers, has launched a campaign using digital marketing, social media and consumer events to boost the sales of pig meat.
“As a leading UK pig processor, we recognize our responsibility to highlight the benefits of pork, encourage consumers to try new meals using pork and help them learn more about pork,” said a spokeswoman for the company, which enlisted the services of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to help persuade people to choose pork.

France pig processor focuses on water conservation, reduces consumption 30%

Abera has reduced its water consumption by 30%, saving the company €60,000 a year in expenses.

French pig processor Abera began a water conservation campaign two years ago that has succeeded in reducing the company's consumption by 30%.
According to the company, water use for the first three months of 2011 came to 15,000 cubic meters (15 million liters), compared to 21,300 cubic meters during the same time in 2008. This has resulted in a 30% reduction in usage per pig slaughtered, down to 210 liters from an average of almost 300 liters two years ago. The total savings, said Abera, equates roughly to the amount consumed annually by households in a town of 2,000 residents.
Abera general manager Michel Gaumerais and a team of seven people from the plant launched the campaign, which began by measuring the consumption at each step of the process from lairage to final product. This soon revealed opportunities for reducing the volume, such as at the primary offal removal and carcass washing stages. Wash-down water was recycled for an initial rinse-off of soiling from the vehicles used to transport pigs to the plant, and a method of offal removal using less water was developed. Moreover, each water point in the abattoir was equipped with a new valve offering better management of pressure and flow rate.
The company was also able to renegotiate the contract with its water utility supplier. Overall, Abera estimates that it has managed to save €60,000 per year since the improvements were implemented.

Australian sow numbers to rise through 2016

According to the latest projections by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences at its annual outlook conference, the 12 months to March 2012 will see an increase in sow numbers to 307,000, so that slaughters rise to 4.71 million pigs per year and production grows to 338,000 metric tons. The expectations for 2015-2016 are an inventory of 329,000 sows supporting a slaughter total of 4.99 million pigs and 355,000 metric tons of pork produced nationally.
The numbers represent a gradual recovery after decreases over the past 10 years. The number of breeding sows in Australia fell from 356,000 in 2002 to 269,000 in 2010 and pig slaughters fell accordingly, from 5.6 million animals per year to under 4.6 million. The volume of pork produced annually dropped from 407,000 metric tons to 330,000 metric tons.
The driving force for expansion will be relatively high retail prices for the competing meats of beef and lamb, although producers locally also will gain from a projected lowering of feed grain prices that combines with improved productivity to lower their production costs. Imports currently account for about 70% of the processed pig meat market in Australia. ABARES analysts expect around 138,000 metric tons to be imported in 2011-2012 and a further rise to 155,000 metric tons by 2015-2016 as a relatively high exchange rate for the Australian dollar maintains the competitiveness of imports.

EU assesses salmonella risk in pig meat

An assessment by the European Food Safety Authority suggests that pigs and pig meat may be responsible for 10% to 20% of all human cases of salmonellosis in the European Union and that controlling salmonella more effectively within the pig meat food chain would have a direct impact on reducing the number of human cases.
EFSA’s Biological Hazards Panel (BIOHAZ) evaluated a series of measures to reduce the number of human cases of salmonella. These included ensuring pigs in breeding holdings are free from salmonella, ensuring that the feed is also free from salmonella, adequate cleaning and disinfection of holdings, avoiding contamination during slaughter, and decontaminating carcasses. The panel indicated that a hundredfold reduction of the number of salmonella bacteria on contaminated carcasses would result in a 60% to 80% reduction of the cases of human salmonellosis originating from pig meat consumption.
The experts also indicated that decreasing the levels of salmonella in holdings where pigs are bred would result in the highest reduction of salmonella in pigs going to slaughter.
The BIOHAZ Panel assessment of the public health risks of salmonella in pigs was based on a Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment, which provided a quantitative estimate of the existing risk factors and likely effects of the measures proposed to reduce them. The panel’s opinion was also based on data from two baseline surveys, on salmonella in breeder and in slaughter pigs, produced by EFSA’s Zoonoses Data Collection Unit.

Danish processor may leave Poland

Market sources in Denmark are reporting that Danish pork processor Tican wants to sell its pig meat businesses in Poland.
According to an export bulletin in the UK quoted by the British Pig Executive (BPEX), the operation in Poland has been occupying too many management resources and also has cost Tican over €15 million. But the processor's CEO, Ove Thejls, says no decision has been taken yet on selling its Polish subsidiary, called Nove, and any sale would not take place until 2011 at the earliest, since the business must first be profitable before it is sold.

Running efficient finishing pens

As some slaughterhouses reduce their weekly kills, stocking densities increase in finishing pens.
“While maximizing sale weights increases the return on a pig, considerable numbers of over-weights are being seen on some farms,” says Paul Thompson, veterinary consultant to the UK-based pig-breeding company ACMC Ltd.
Even when pigs gain more weight by spending additional time in finishing pens, the practice can cause problems, he explains, because higher stocking density can reduce daily liveweight gain and lead to more disease.
Thompson suggests that farmers consider short-term alternative accommodations or accepting a lower price on a percentage of pigs in order to clear the backlog and ensure that remaining pigs grow efficiently.

Welfare labels for all of Europe’s meat?

A pig housing supplier in Europe warned recently that all meat produced in the European Union would soon be required by a new EU law to be labelled with one of four possible categories according to the animal welfare status of the system used in its production.
The warning may have been slightly premature in that the EU discussions are still ongoing (and no-one yet knows the number of categories, nor the proposed form of assessment). But it is true that the European Commission has tabled proposals for a co-ordinated labelling scheme aimed at informing consumers and encouraging higher-welfare systems. ... Read the rest of the blog on AnimalAgNet.com.

Pleurisy reduces carcass weight, increases slaughter charges

Pleurisy in pigs is an important health issue for both production units and processing plants, says the British Pig Executive (BPEX).
It quotes research at Cambridge University's Veterinary School in the UK that found a cost of £2.26 (about US$3.62) per pig to the producer from reduced carcass weight and increased age at slaughter.
This figure is based on an average pig within a batch that has a pleurisy prevalence of 10%, the bulletin noted. Bearing in mind that some batches can have a prevalence greater than 10%, the cost can be even greater.
Further costs are incurred at the processing stage because the abattoir has to carry out extra trimming due to the fact that pleurisy causes the pleural lining around the lungs to become inflamed and stick to the chest wall. According to the UK research, the effect on line speed in the slaughterhouse and increased disposal charges can cost another £0.29 (US$0.46) per pig.