Betting on high health
Elgin countys' Premium Pork uses strict biosecurity measures to maintain pig health statusBy ROBERT IRWIN
Premium Pork Genetics Inc. is the new kid on the breeding stock block. But the company, which is the Genetiporc products distributor for Ontario, is betting on what company partner and general manager Scott Davidson terms "the healthiest pigs in North America" to carve out a place in Ontario's highly competitive swine genetics market."If you have a healthy, high quality pig there's going to be a demand," predicts Davidson. He says Genetiporc animals "are free of all major pathogens including PRRS." The herd tests negative for even common pathogens like mycoplasma and bordetella; "the only bug is a very mild strep suis."
Premium Pork was initially founded as a commercial pork operation in 1996 by Henry Lansink, Eddy Heeselss and two silent partners. Genetiporc, launched about 10 years ago, is a division of the Breton group, the largest registrant of purebred pigs in Canada and the largest user of the Canadian Swine Genetic Evaluation.
A vertically integrated company located in Quebec's Beauce region south of Quebec city, Genetiporc turns out breeding animals at a rate of 100,000 pigs annually.
The company, founded in 1944, also produces 600,000 market hogs, and last year chalked up $135 million in returns from swine out of annual company sales totaling $290 million. Genetiporc has a U.S. division - where a "k" was tacked on to the end of the name to Americanize it - plus operations in Mexico, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Korea and China.
Davidson says Premium got into the breeding stock business when they "couldn't find large enough volumes of PRRS free sows and boars." He claims the company has been able to gradually reduce PRRS in its commercial herds by using a vaccination and 60-day quarantine protocol when introducing Genetiporc stock.
They followed Genetiporc's comprehensive production manual meticulously when building and populating the 1,350-sow farrow-to-wean barn that opened near Dutton, Elgin county, last fall.
Heavy emphasis is placed on biosecurity. Only on-site or cleaned and disinfected vehicles get past the perimeter fence that surrounds the 120x350 foot building. Feed trucks unload into a cluster of gravity bins located outside the fence. Barn staff must shower before entering the building.
To reach the shower entry point entrants must pass over a barrier in a small changing room located in the middle of the perimeter fence. They leave their off-site footwear on one side of the barrier, don special boots, exit on the opposite side from which they entered and walk another 50 feet to the shower.
Professionally serviced rodent bait stations are spaced at 25 foot intervals around the exterior barn walls. "That's the distance Orkin, our pest control company, says rodents are likely to vary from their normal route," Davidson explains.
The biosecurity coupled with high performance animals appears to have worked well during the past winter. Davidson says piglets averaged 17 days to reach five kg.
Dams are pure Landrace. They are bred artificially to one of 15 pure York boars that are housed in the barn.
"We have in-house AI to maintain the PRRS negative status," Davidson explains.
Premium does offer semen from 21 boars for sale commercially. But boars for public use are housed and collected under rent-a-pen agreements with both Ontario Swine Improvement and National Swine genetics.
In addition to the new breeding stock venture, Premium has four commercial production units in southwestern Ontario. Two other new farrow-wean units are planned for this summer.
Davidson has also been exploring eastern Ontario for finishing opportunities. He reasons the low pig density in that end of the province makes herd health easier to maintain. Furthermore, Premium may eventually supply eastern Ontario pigs to the Breton abattoir, he says. Breton has carved out a high-health niche market in the eastern seaboard of the U.S. for pigs raised under a unique U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved protocol that includes a specification for medication and growth promotant-free production.
Pigs are finished on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border but most are slaughtered at IBP in Iowa. Carcasses average more than 265 pounds: "We're consistently hitting 54 to 55 per cent lean, and 2.6 inch loin depth."
Davidson admits Premium is currently losing money. But he notes high health and high premiums earned for carcass merit mean "it would be pretty safe to say we're losing less than the average."
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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QS Net gives hope to small producers
By ROBERT IRWIN
Quality Swine Co-op has posted a profit in 20 of its 34 years. And this year, like most of its members, the co-op lost money."We do know that we're caught in a shift," explains general manager Jim Hunter. He notes QS revenues are largely dependent on a dwindling number of feeder pigs marketed through the co-op.
About 130 of the group's 2,800 lifetime members were on hand for this year's annual meeting. More significantly, perhaps, many QS members are smaller operators who are leaving the industry. But QS, a widely recognized innovator in feeder pig marketing, is betting that QS Net, a newly minted subsidiary, will give new hope to smaller pork producers.
Those attending the annual meeting were generally supportive of a plan that would see QS Net acquire a minority interest in farrowing operations whose owners want to participate in a production loop.
Hunter says QS Net will contract for a central segregated early weaning (SEW) nursery to raise pigs to feeder size for sale to Quality Swine members. He predicts the new venture could also be attractive to finishing operators who want to invest in a sow operation to assure a supply of specific pigs.
In addition to the Thursday tele-auction, which has connected buyers and sellers of feeder pigs since the co-op was founded, QS also provides a formula pricing system for members who prefer to let current hog markets guide the price of feeder pigs. Last fall, formula pricing was enhanced by a plan that allows members to exchange pigs based on hog futures.
QS also puts about 500 member pigs a week through a SEW barn. Finishers assume ownership of the animals when they are ready for finishing barns.
Previous Quality Swine loop initiatives, including one with Growmark, failed to take off. One reason has been a failure to attract sow owners willing to make a long-term commitment. Increasingly, large finishers want a high-volume, continuous source of pigs, with common health and genetics.
Hunter reasons that by QS Net having "even some minority ownership of a sow operation, you would have a little more control over production and the placement of those pigs."
Hunter says that QS Net loop may partner with a feed company. However, he stresses such involvement would be restricted to sow and weaner pig feed, leaving finishers free to choose their own nutritional programs. Many QS finisher members are cash croppers who have used pigs purchased through the co-op as a means of adding value to grain.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Red tape plugs open border
Haunted by spectres of Canada-U.S. wheat wars, the Canadian pork industry is stepping up efforts to resolve infighting preventing live American pigs from crossing a border that has been open for more than four months.On Dec. 3, 1998, federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief opened the Canada-U.S. border to live U.S. hogs from so-called "Stage IV and V" states, which have no known infection of the pseudorabies virus (PRV), or have been PRV-free for more than one year.
Since then, however, not a single live Yankee pig has come north, as the Canadian pork industry continues to haggle over the terms. National pork leaders, meanwhile, warn against allowing the contentious issue to escalate from a Canada-U.S. trade irritant to an all-out brawl.
"Be careful not to incite the National Pork Producers Association and the USDA....If it goes to trade court, it is no longer a health issue," Canadian Pork Council (CPC) vice-president Carl Moore told the late-March Canadian Swine Breeders Association (CSBA) annual meeting in Guelph - already abuzz with rumours that three large Canadian packers had already gone straight to Washington.
Breeders and packers, however, continue to harbour deep misgivings about the rules, but for opposite reasons.
"Canada and Australia are the only countries free of PRV. Do we really want to jeopardize that?" Saskatchewan breeder and CSBA president Len Zimmer told Moore.
For their part, pork packers say the rules, which require mandatory truck washouts and veterinarian inspections, are too onerous and costly, and should be relaxed before importing live U.S. pigs can be feasible.
Despite the rift, CPC executive director Martin Rice insists there's a determination to resolve differences. Following a meeting with the Canadian Meat Council, which represents pork packers, in Montreal late March, Rice says packers want some flexibility on where truck disinfection occurs, the requirement for meat tags versus simpler tattoos, the requirement for separate handling and assembly at the plant, and rules on spreading manure from the northbound trucks.
Allaying breeder concerns, Rice insists that there's no intent to weaken the health rules: "We actually may be able to improve some areas without making them more restrictive of trade." While packers are lobbying for inspection of U.S. animals by plant workers, veterinary inspection at the border will still be required, says Rice. Nor will pigs from stage III states be admitted, says Harriston breeder Betty Small, CSBA past president. Small says federal officials report that changing the regulations would take a minimum six to nine months.
Still anxious about the devastation that the disease could cause to their export markets, breeders remain adamant that the border stay closed unless specific conditions are met. In a strongly worded resolution, CSBA advised the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that it remains "totally opposed to the movement of slaughter hogs from the U.S. to Canadian slaughter facilities," unless the Canadian herd is sampled for PRV 30 days prior to any imports. Determining "a base line of PRV-free status" would protect Canada from any U.S. WTO challenge, or from legal action by Canadian producers.
While acknowledging that breeders "can't stand in the way of WTO," CSBA swine ambassador Ron James suggests safeguards such as border washing facilities, and placing a federal seal on U.S. trucks while in Canada.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Opening the breed books
Swine breeders are widening the net to pump up the shrinking gene poolBY JOHN MUGGERIDGE
When it comes to the bottom line on the pork cheque, your average producer cares more about a pig's production than its pedigree. Still, you want to know you're getting the goods when you buy purebred.The Canadian Swine Breeders Association (CSBA), the body charged with preserving the purity of Canadian swine bloodlines, has opened the door to allowing commoners into its book of blue bloods, under strict conditions.
Ron James, swine ambassador with the 125-member CSBA, says the move was prompted by concerns that the national swine gene pool was getting smaller: "Opening it up will help bring new genes in. Breeders need new breed lines."
As well, it will keep Canada compatible with other countries selling pigs into Canada such as England and France, which already allow non-purebred pigs into their national herd books, James says.
There are also reports of at least four herds, two in the West and two in the East, which are having difficulty getting registrations.
At the CSBA annual meeting in Guelph late March, breeders voted to explore amending their bylaws to allow upgrading non-purebred pigs from the "alternate herd book" to purebred status on the sixth generation, with a designation to be carried to the end of the line.
The dairy industry already permits upgrading, and it "has proved quite beneficial," said retired breeder Don Lowry from eastern Ontario.
Tillsonburg breeder Arnold Ypma recognizes the importance of the breed book, but said "it's much more important to make a better pig than to get it registered."
The British herd book already allows upgrading Mths purebred pigs to full purebred status after the third generation, so the change would level the playing field for Canadians. It would also prevent local breeders from getting pigs registered in the U.S. and re-importing them, a practice federal animal registration officer David Trus called "laundering animals."
Trus said the big step for CSBA will be "defining what is a purebred, and that moves into your breed standards."
No easy task, he said, for breeds that date back to the 1700s: "There is no one test that says this is one breed....Selection alone can change the animals."
Even an obvious trait such as colour might depend on a single gene out of 80,000 in a pig, but it takes more than a gene to define a breed. Ypma, who raises Durocs, said upgrading non-purebreds wouldn't open the door to white Durocs, for instance, as the colour is defined in the breed standards.
And what about transgenic pigs? Said Trus: "It would be difficult to say a single gene makes it no longer of that breed."
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Sharing growth on minds of feather folk
BY CHRISTINA SELBY
Processors looking for more supply and governments pushing for exports has translated into tremendous growth in the chicken industry. The best way to produce that increase and how to share the growth among the provinces topped the list of hot topics at the Chicken Farmers of Ontario annual meeting in Toronto last month.John Kolk, then-Chicken Farmers of Canada chairman, emphasized the national vision for the industry - "building a consumer-driven Canadian chicken industry that provides opportunities for profitable growth for all stakeholders," including hatcheries, feed companies and processors.
Kolk said that relations with other industry players needed to be re-evaluated with an eye to greater co-operation. But many producers were left wondering if CFC meant integration instead of co-operation after listening to Buddy Pilgrim, a large-scale U.S. poultry integrator at the national agency's annual meeting. (See U.S. picture... page 44).
Mike Scheuring, CFO chairman, was on the vision steering committee and said Ontario is already adopting a consumer-driven focus. Producers are growing "exactly the categories and sizes the consumer is asking for" under the province's new supply determination and distribution system, he said. "I'd say we're ahead of the other provinces in that one."
Unfortunately, Scheuring reported that the board had "only limited success" improving relations with the Association of Ontario Chicken Processors. While stressing the need for co-operation between the two, "reasonable returns and profits should not be the exclusive right of big companies and integrators, but for farmers as well," he said. (See Producers seek... page 44).
One way to open the door to growth would be to make a portion of allocation available for "a free sign-up," Scheuring suggested. "If you guarantee processors 90 or 95 per cent and have five or 10 per cent open, every processor, small or big, could go out, find some growers that like to work together with them and in this way increase production."
This would make the system "self-regulating" and reduce the number of requests to the board, appeals to the Farm Products tribunal, and requests directly to provincial Agriculture Minister Noble Villeneuve. "It's a bad cycle, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of time and money wasted," Scheuring said.
Under the current system, each processor can increase supply only by the same percentage as every other processor "and not one chicken more. That is not a good situation," he said.
"Most of the large processors today - Cuddy or whoever - became big by being able to go out and deal with some producers. Now you don't have that anymore. You have a closed shop.
"We have to do something to give more opportunities to independent processors."
Scheuring is determined that Ontario should get back some of the market share it has lost in recent years, but told growers that unchecked growth was not the answer.
"We will do it on a slowly growing pattern, testing the market as to what we can do without harming the price."
Ontario producers have witnessed other provinces taking advantage of new growth opportunities. Last November, for example, the Saskatchewan board received approval from CFC under the "exceptional circumstances" clause of the national allocation agreement to almost double its broiler production in the next four years.
Even though CFO initially fought against the level of growth in Saskatchewan, Scheuring acknowledged that the board is now accepting the decision. "Saskatchewan did not have any part of growth in the past eight years....They're just catching up to where they normally should be if they'd had a growth pattern over the last couple of years."
Scheuring said the balance of power between the provincial boards and the national agency needs adjustment. "I think we went from black to white and we have to find grey here." The old top-down approach, with the national agency telling everyone how much to grow, has been replaced by the new national allocation agreement, which gives flexibility to the provinces. "I think we went from one extreme to the other."
A national system is very important as Canada heads into the next round of world trade negotiations, said Scheuring.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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U.S. picture disturbs Canadian producers
No one would call Buddy Pilgrim the Ugly American. But for chicken producers attending the recent Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC) annual meeting in Ottawa where he was keynote speaker, the message from Pilgrim, was, well, both ugly and American.The former president and chief operating officer of Pilgrim's Pride, the fourth-largest chicken processor in the U.S., suggested Canadian chicken farmers focus on "niche markets. It's difficult for you to be as efficient as the U.S.," he concluded.
Pilgrim, whose company had 13,000 employees and posted $1.3 billion in sales, explained "vertical integration, which came to our industry in the 1960s, drove significant costs out of our industry." He described the partnership where farmers own the land and processors own the chickens as "free enterprise at its best."
"As a producer, I felt insulted to have to listen to something like this at the annual meeting of my national agency. That was not called for at all," says Mike Scheuring, Chicken Farmers of Ontario chairman. "[Pilgrim] should not have tried to defend the side of the producers as an integrator."
Nicole Beauchamp, head of communication and promotion at CFC, says Buddy Pilgrim came highly recommended. "He has substantial experience with export and increasing consumption domestically." While we may not always agree with the perspective of others, it's important to know what's out there, she says. "If the world is dominated by integrators like that, this is what we are up against.
"Obviously, there were some things he said that just don't sit here. We have a very different philosopy regarding farmers, the industry and the worth of work," says Beauchamp.
CFC director Phil Kudelka, who chaired the question-and-answer session that followed Pilgrim's remarks, made it clear contentious questions weren't welcome. Still one question about wages in U.S. processing plants did make it past Kudelka, who represents the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council.
Pilgrim noted there are many skilled processing jobs, but admitted unskilled workers receive about a dollar above minimum wage, around US$5 per hour. He said contracts with producers are based on 4.3 cents per pound plus bonuses, which provide a return to producers of between 16 and 20 per cent on investment.
Pilgrim's remarks were in sharp contrast with speakers at earlier years' CFC annual meetings, where officials from the U.S.-based National Contract Poultry Growers Association described how their independent farmer members had been exploited by large U.S. processors. - Robert Irwin, files from Christina Selby
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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