Facing the Future

Internationally noted scientists Frank Dunshea of Australia and George Foxcroft from Canada concluded discussion at the 2012 Banff Pork Seminar with their views on the technological and research needs that would allow the industry can keep pace with population growth.
Citing Jeff Simmons's address from the opening morning of the seminar, Dunshea said continued technological advances are vital to ensure that livestock production can meet the needs of a human population that will double by 2050.
While breeders work on genetics to improve the animal itself, considerable work is being done and more is required to ensure that those animals get every advantage possible to reach production targets, said Dunshea, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
"Jeff Simmons the other day talked about the fact that we actually need technology because we're going to have to produce 100 per cent more food and 70 per cent of that food will have to come from efficiencies (gained through) technologies," he said.
Dunshea formed his talk around various technologies now being used and developed to improve pork production and meat quality, including hormone supplements, minerals, nutrients and chemical castration.
Among those technologies, Australian researchers have put considerable work into the development of vaccinations that immunize male pigs against production within their own bodies of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRF) as an alternative to physical castrations and the resulting effects, including the stress placed upon the animals, subsequent loss of gains and excess fat deposition.
Along with the advantages in gains and muscle quality, entire males vaccinated against GnRF demonstrate the desired effects of physical castration, including impacts on boar taint and aggressive behaviour, said Dunshea.
He showed data indicating that feed efficiency in entire males vaccinated against GnRF have improved feed efficiency and put on less fat than barrows.
"This issue is boar taint. For those people who are sensitive to it, it is obnoxious," he said.
Importantly, intact boars vaccinated against GnRF production grow faster than barrows, have lower levels of feed to gain and put on less back fat.
Dunshea also spoke about advantages available from other nutrient and hormone technologies, including use of porcine somatotropin, beta agonists such as PayLean, cysteamine, chromium, betaine and xylanase and the ultimate effects on feed conversion, daily gains, meat quality and disease resistance.
"We actually have some excellent metabolic modifiers already and we need to advocate their use while we continue to (investigate) other technologies," Dunshea said in wrapping up his presentation.
He said responses are inconsistent, so there is a need for continued work in diet and genomics to gain better and more consistent results at the least possible cost.
Picking up from Dunshea's remarks, Foxcroft gave a personal perspective on the need in Canada to change the approach to how research is funded to ensure that brilliant young minds can be attracted into the industry to carry the torch.
"Getting funded is a major issue. It is a little bit unfortunate that sometimes, instead of being partners in this discussion sometimes it becomes a very opportunistic thing," said Foxcroft, professor emeritus and former Canada Research Chair in the swine reproduction program at the University of Alberta.

"It would be nice to sort of move in a direction where it's more of a partnership, where those that deliver research are just as valued as the people that have the funding that are asking that the research be done," he said.
"You start to get loyalty and you start to get a very different attitude, to delivering R&D in something like and industry setting."

Loyalty programs, in which students are associated as scholars, come at no extra cost while producing an improved profile for those students, he said.
Foxcroft, now retired from the university, said he finds it very difficult to deal with the decision not to replace him as the research chair and to also leave unfilled the research chair formerly held by nutritionist Ron Ball since his retirement from the U of A.
Swine research programming now underway in Canada is successful, but could be more effectively packaged as a national program, said Foxcroft.
Building alliances that go up the entire value chain require a shared vision of what the various players are trying to sustain, he said.
Success stories are found across Canada and represent multi-million dollar commitments to research and development, he said.
A key question, however, involves the role of producer boards and asks who is presenting that potential to people talking about a national program, he said.
"If we can't represent our potential in the national debate, then there's a whole piece of the jigsaw missing," he said. •
— By Brenda Kossowan

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Frank Dunshea from Australia

George Foxcroft