SIP Research Panel

If the Canadian pork industry is going to stay competitive in the world market, research is key to economic growth and development, said a panel discussing the impact of research on productivity, in a afternoon session prior to start of Banff Pork Seminar registration.
“It is extremely important to advance research and combine the research with the innovation factor,” said Tricia Schmalenberg, Environmental Manager for Canada Packers during the panel discussion.
“It is one of the key tools we have to improve productivity and promote economic growth. It helps us focus on the critical elements.”
University of Guelph researcher Christine Bone, whose work focuses on reducing boar taint, said research can’t operate in a vacuum if it is to be successful. She and other researchers have collaborated with a variety of people with diverse skills to help make advancements and discoveries possible.
Agriculture Canada scientist Nuria Prieto’s research looks at the risk of lowering internal cooking temperature for pork and how it will affect safety and eating quality. While her research is not in the hog barn, she said any improvements that encourage more consumption also help producers.
“Research on the meat side that improves safety, quality and consumer satisfaction, benefits producers by increasing the amount of pork and value of the pork,” said Prieto.
Canada can’t rely on research from other countries. With our unique climate and environment, Canada needs its own research, said Schmalenberg.
“Canada has some unique challenges and benefits that require made in Canada solutions. Investing in the Canadian pork research sector is important to ensure we have solutions that are specific to us and that might be a little bit different from the rest of the world.”
When asked how the good research can be adopted by producers, Schmalenberg said the research needs to be practical and fit in with existing infrastructure to allow the new discoveries to be easily adopted.
“Collaboration is the key to make sure research and industry are closely linked so that it is practical at the end of it.” •
— By Mary MacArthur

SIP Boar Taint

Research to reduce and identify boar taint could save producers and processors thousands of dollars, said a University of Guelph researcher during the Banff Pork congress.
“It is so rare you can see something that will improve the environment, improve animal welfare and improve profitability for producers,” said Christine Bone.
Currently, boar taint is prevented by castration, but castration reduces weight gain and feed conversion efficiency. By finding alternatives to castration without the off odour and off flavour in the meat, may support the use of intact males in pork production, said Bone.
The potential of boar taint means no boars are used for food production in Canada even though not all intact males have boar taint. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency mandates ridglings pigs, males with one descended testicle are automatically discarded if they are found at packing plants because of the possibility of boar taint.
Work on a rapid boar taint detection test could quickly identify if the meat on the ridglings is tainted and be allowed for food production and not discarded. Similar to a COVID test, the test identifies the compounds associated with boar taint and if they are present in the animal.
Bone said they are working with a meat processing facility in Guelph to commercially validate the test. From preliminary work, 30 percent of the carcasses that are discarded are boar taint free. Discarding ridgling because of potential taint can cost individual packing plants up to $100,000. Now, the test takes 20 minutes from sampling the potentially tainted pig to test results.
As well as developing a test for boar taint at the packing plant, Bone is looking at alternatives to castration including finding genetic markers associated with boar taint and feed additives that will eliminate boar taint.
“We are going to need a way of determining whether a boar will develop boar taint or not and if they will, which treatment is going to be most effective and ideally at a very early age.”
Bone is evaluating a number of dietary treatments that may reduce boar taint. She is looking at natural products used in Chinese herbal medicine, including those found in garlic, olives and ginkgo plants, other diet additives like potato starch and sugar beet pulp and charcoal-based binding agents like activated charcoal.
Feeding trials are underway and have identified three different groups of boars: ones that responded positively to treatment, some did not respond and the third group that never developed boar taint at all. •
— By Mary MacArthur