Better Pork - August 2005

BEHIND   THE   LINES

 by ROBERT IRWIN

The Ontario pork industry has a project that it can get its teeth into -- the control and eradication of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), a disease that has been taking an increasingly large piece of potential income from producers in the last year. The proposed project is expected to cost more than $1 million over the next couple of years.

It's not just the farmers that have been losing. As producer and Ontario Pork Industry Council chair Joanne Selves notes: If her sows aren't producing because of abortions and early cullings, her trucker isn't getting business and neither is her feed supplier. Then processors have to be worried as well about meeting their customers' commitments. Nearly every aspect of the pork production complex is affected when this disease strikes and spreads.

Commitments to the risk management study by Ontario Pork have been made, largely by producers through Ontario Pork's $299,000 contribution. Dr. Ernest Sanford, a member of the advisory panel guiding the PRRS project, says many groups have offered to help with further parts of funding this PRRS research project. As of July 15, an Ontario Pork Industry Council Swine Advisory Health Board was being established and charged with establishing a fund-raising campaign. After a somewhat frenetic start this spring, the project is taking shape. "Things were moving too quickly," Sanford told Better Pork. "We were getting the cart before the horse." The committee had to reposition itself.

Also in this issue, researchers from the Prairie Swine Centre in Saskatoon offer valuable advice about the potential for improving profit margins in several key areas. John Patience and Lee Whittington remind producers that they can save a considerable amount - perhaps as much as $25,000 a year - by making a series of careful adjustments to their feeding and operational management. And Ken Engele suggests that an effective marketing plan within a particular grading grid system can generate anywhere from $0.50 to $4 per hog if "core" is redefined as the weight range where the margin over feed costs is maximized.

Another big cost item is electrical energy. In this respect, agricultural engineer Ron MacDonald strongly recommends a comprehensive energy audit as a vital first step in increasing energy efficiency and making for an improved operating environment.BP



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Better Pork - August 2005

Ontario's pork industry moves to tackle the rising toll of PRRS

After living, sometimes uneasily, with Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome for more than a decade, major players in the pork industry are committing substantial funds to trace the many strains of the disease that are plaguing the province's pig herd
by DON STONEMAN
An ambitious project to trace the genomes of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) in the province's pork industry is getting underway in the fall. The ultimate goal: to eliminate the virus from Ontario herds.

Late June, Ontario Pork committed nearly $300,000 of producers' money to the first part of the project, aimed at tracing the strains of PRRS which are in the province's pig herd, says chairman Larry Skinner of Monkton. Other industry players are also expected to commit funds to the overall project, which is roughly estimated to cost in excess of $1 million.

The Ontario Pork Industry Council has put together a project committee with broad industry base and stakeholder participation, says chairman and Fullarton-area producer Joanne Selves. The objectives are prevention, control and management, and eradication, she says.

The Ontario pork industry has been living, sometimes uneasily, with PRRS for more than a decade. Why the interest now in tracking and eradication?

The PRRS virus, which compromises a pig's immune system and leaves it open to other diseases, has been evolving, says University of Guelph disease researcher Cate Dewey, who made the research funding proposal to the pork board.

Some producers have learned to live with PRRS as a relatively minor annoyance. But there aren't as many producers who feel that way as there once was, according to Stratford-based swine practitioner Doug MacDougald.

The Quebec industry, with slightly more pigs than Ontario, estimates that the PRRS virus costs $70 million a year, says MacDougald, a veterinarian and member of the steering committee which is launching the project. In the United States, the cost of PRRS may be as much as $600 million.

"There are an estimated 800 to 1,000 different strains of the virus in North America, ranging from mild to negligible impact on the pig to very virulent and aggressive. So it is hard to estimate the cost of the impact. It makes it very challenging to buttonhole," says MacDougald. "We hope that we don't have them all here. We could be in trouble."

Last September marked a sort of an epiphany for the Ontario pork industry. The PRRS toll has increased month by month since the beginning of last fall, according to records at the University of Guelph's diagnostic laboratory and conversations with private veterinarians, Dewey says. Also last fall, Ontario veterinarians heard about PRRS genome-tracing and eradication projects in both Minnesota and Quebec. Over the winter the combination of an increased incidence of PRRS and the growing possibility that the competitiveness of the Ontario industry may be waning raised concerns.

PRRS is being eradicated from an area of Minnesota that is not "pig dense," Dewey says. Producers have agreed to go through a process of eliminating PRRS and then replacing their pigs with animals from PRRS-negative farms. The idea is to create a zone that can be kept free of PRRS. While the numbers of cases may slip over the summer, Dewey attributes that to warm weather (the PRRS virus doesn't like the heat) and warns that farmers should brace for a resurgence this fall.

Disease has evolved
More and more pig farms are breaking with PRRS and some of these are on operations that have lived with, and tolerated, the disease for some time. The new outbreaks were overwhelming, Dewey says, and frustratingly for barn managers even farms that had taken the route of depopulating and repopulating are having outbreaks.

This has led to some serious questions being posed, Dewey says:

"If you go to the trouble of depopulating and repopulating with new pigs, why do you re-break with the disease? How is the virus getting back into your farm?

"If you thought that you had PRRS under control and you have an outbreak, what happened?"

The first question remains to be answered, though Dewey cites a theory that may provide an answer to the second question.

A virus causes PRRS and the virus reproduces with ribonucleic acid (RNA), Dewey says. "We know that the RNA does not replicate exactly," she says, so scientists see a phenomenon known as "genetic drift."

"You may have a virus in the herd that does not cause problems," Dewey says. But, as it replicates and multiplies in the pig's body, a new virus emerges, one that perhaps the animal can't deal with. That new virus may be more likely to cause an infection than the virus that started in the herd.

In short, the disease has evolved, Dewey says. An example of that is the reproductive part of the disease. When they were first experienced, the reproductive problems caused by PRRS were described as either late-term abortion or early farrowing. A sow would deliver in 110 days rather than 115 days, Dewey says. Now PRRS causes abortions throughout the term. Rates of abortions are very high -- 20 to 40 per cent -- and there is a high rate of mortality in the sows, about 10 per cent. Then there are mummified and stillborn pigs.

The industry has questions about how to deal with this disease, Dewey says. There are two commercial vaccines available to producers. Both are modified virus vaccines and some producers are wary of them. "Some people will say that the vaccine by itself causes problems. Some charge that the vaccine doesn't provide protection from infection. Others will use the vaccine and find that they are getting pretty good protection from it."

And then there is an even-more controversial on-farm treatment called serum inoculation. Blood is taken from PRRS-positive pigs in the late stages of nursery and injected into new gilts coming into the production system. Dewey describes serum inoculation as "in my opinion, scary."

Ultimately, the PRRS project hopes to answer some key questions, Dewey says.

  • How does the disease move from farm to farm?
  • How do we keep the disease out of herds?
  • Once it is there, what do we do about it?
  • Do we vaccinate or use serum inoculation?
  • How do we best reduce the clinical signs?
  • What do we do to get the disease gradually under control?
  • How do we prevent the disease from spreading from one herd to another?

Telltale clinical signs that your herd is PRRS-positive are stillborn and weak-born pigs and pigs dying on the sow. These piglets should be submitted to the provincial diagnostic lab for examination of tonsils and lungs for signs of the disease. "It is not a hard disease to diagnose," Dewey says.

If there are no clinical signs, blood tests should be done on the pigs in the late nursery stage, Dewey says. By then, they will be carrying antibodies to PRRS if they have been exposed. "When the virus breaks in a herd, no matter what stage of pregnancy, you will get hit," she says.

Disease technicians have adopted a term known as "SAM sows." SAM is short for Sow Abortion and Mortality syndrome. Typically, abortion will hit 20 to 40 per cent of the sows and 10 per cent will die.

Dewey stresses that there is no connection between PRRS and early weaning. However, there may be a connection between the spread of PRRS and modern three-site production, where pigs from different sow herds are mixed in nursery barns.

Mixing pigs is "probably a negative thing" from a producer point of view, Dewey believes. It certainly helps to spread the disease because PRRS-positive pigs are mixed with pigs that haven't been exposed to the disease. Mixing pigs in the nursery, however, doesn't explain how PRRS spreads from one sow barn to another.

PRRS first showed up in Ontario as a reproductive problem. A study by Ontario health lab supervisor and virologist Suzy Carmen indicates that PRRS was in Ontario in the 1980s, Dewey says. It was likely in Europe at the same time. Segregated early weaning is not practiced in Europe, Dewey points out.

However, at that time, European producers were early adopters of artificial insemination (AI), while Ontario producers were still holding back.

Dewey believes that AI was one of the major factors in the spread of PRRS around Denmark and other countries.

The focus is on how PRRS moves from farm to farm, Dewey says. If we had PRRS eradication at the individual farm level, we could figure how to keep it out of farms that are negative and then ultimately go to area eradication.

Genetic exports compromised
Woodstock-based swine exporter Jim Donaldson says PRRS causes a particular challenge for sales abroad. "I would love to see PRRS eliminated," says the exporter, whose nucleus herd near Tavistock is PRRS-negative. "Definitely, having PRRS in the country is a limiting factor. If you are going to eliminate it, it has to be a united and unanimous program."

As far as Donaldson is concerned, PRRS has spread worldwide. According to World Trade Organization rules, countries that already have PRRS shouldn't be prohibiting the entry of pigs that has been exposed to the disease. But many countries insist that only pigs from PRRS-free herds be imported. Donaldson says these imported high-health pigs are put into barns a few hundred yards away from infected pigs and they come down sick.

He says he has used semen from AI units that are vaccinated and show a positive titre. After seven years, his nucleus herd is still PRRS-free. Big isn't always better, he says. Large units have to live with diseases because they can't afford to depopulate and, every time they bring in gilts, they risk bringing in disease. "Most guys live with it."

Donaldson is a firm believer that transmission is pig to pig. There are only eight to 10 PRRS-negative herds in Ontario, five in Quebec "a couple in PEI and two or three in the West." He is looking for 14,000 pigs from PRRS-free herds for a shipment to Cuba. "That is a task," he says.

The cost of PRRS in a swineherd should not be underestimated, suggests swine practitioner MacDougald. The vet analysed the financial impact on seven different farms and farm systems where PRRS was present and presented it to an industry conference last spring where the concept of tracing virus strains was put forward. All seven infected herds had accurate data available over slightly longer than 12 months, and he measured weaned pig output.

MacDougald says PRRS causes a range of immediate impacts over the first three months and then a trailing impact. In one case, a 1,500-sow herd struck with PRRS lost an estimated $76,000, with two-thirds of the losses resulting from an inability to ship pigs. MacDougald says $76,000 is "in the mid-range of production loss."

In another case, where pig gains were compromised, average daily gain per pig was reduced to 848 grams per day from 930. The result is an opportunity margin loss of $3.29 per pig, MacDougald says.

In the case of a 3,000-sow finishing system, 14,000 finishing pigs were affected before the virus was eliminated. At a cost of more than $8 a pig, PRRS took $115,000 from the bottom line of that hog raising system. PRRS reduced weight out of the barn by two kilograms a pig. The cull rate was doubled to 2.8 per cent. Average daily gain was reduced to 807 grams a day from 933 grams before the outbreak. The cost of medication per pig tripled to $2.16 a pig.

A 10 to 25 per cent reduction in production is typical in the first three months after the disease breaks out, he says. There are cases, however, where PRRS does not appear to be a factor in reduced production. MacDougald cites an "outlier" -- an operation that falls outside of the normal disease patterns, where production increased when PRRS was found. In this case, the herd became infected with a mild strain of PRRS as the barn was coming out of severe production problems related to other issues.

There are nearly always "outliers" that fall outside of the normal disease patterns, MacDougald says. In fact, he adds, there is a tremendous range of impact from PRRS and it really depends on which stage the disease has struck. PRRS striking in the sow herd has the greatest impact, MacDougald says. The pigs that survive do reasonably well through the rest of the system, but that depends upon the strain type.

The bigger the barn, the greater the impact. In the case of a 2,500-sow, farrow-to-finish operation that puts out 1,100 pigs a week, the losses totalled $300,000 over a year. In another instance where PRRS was introduced into a finishing site with 14,200 pigs, the cost was over $8 a pig and came to $115,000. Average daily gain was reduced, mortality doubled and medication costs were three times normal.

Depending on the virus, it may not be possible to know that the disease is there unless blood tests are done, MacDougald says.

Role of health laboratory
The animal health laboratory at Guelph will be key to making the tracing project work.

"The diagnostic lab at Guelph can do some pretty great things if they are given the right resources," says Dr. David Alves, assistant chief veterinarian for Ontario.

Grant Maxie, manager of the animal health laboratory, says resources are currently being used to their maximum. Ontario, he notes, is in the middle of a PRRS outbreak, plus swine influenza, "and now circo virus."

The problem with sequencing is putting all the information together after you get it.

Carmen, the virologist who is involved in testing for PRRS at the diagnostic lab, says gene sequencing is already being done routinely on clinical cases when requested to do so for groups of farms. The diagnostic tools are already available and so is the required database, she says. An additional technician will be required because of the expected increase in testing. Veterinarians now ask the lab to test specimens from specific farms, she says. The project aims to test all the samples.

In addition, the steering committee is looking for a more rapid test to identify PRRS, tests to check semen before it leaves boar studs for farms, and establishment of protocols for disinfecting trucks that are used to transport nursery pigs to finishing barns and gilts to sow barns. It also wants to evaluate gilt acclimation protocols to reduce the spread of PRRS by gilts, Ontario Pork's Skinner says.

How the PRRS increase will hit hog markets is questionable, Skinner says. Certainly it has been devastating in herds with large numbers of abortions and post-weaning mortality. Normally, in the fall, Ontario hog numbers increase five to 12 per cent, but Skinner wonders if that increase will be seen now. He says he talked to a producer at the Pork Congress who had PRRS in the barn last November, cleaned up the barn and then had an outbreak again in May. Now that producer is considering depopulating.

Some producers are talking about depopulating nurseries, Skinner says. It is hard to get PRRS out of your nursery unless you are all-in, all out. Most farrow-to-finish operations do all-in, all-out by room only, "so it is more of a challenge" to eliminate PRRS from those nurseries. It's important that other industry groups are willing to contribute to this project as well, Skinner says, noting that he is impressed by "the kind of response and reaction that the industry is making to this. That is very heartening to see."

When a producer has PRRS in the barn, everyone that he or she deals with suffers, Selves says, from feed mill operators to truckers. "Anything that has that significant an impact on the production site has a big impact on everyone else."

Skinner acknowledges Dewey's and Selves' points that Ontario is different from other jurisdictions and can't merely copy the steps being taken in Minnesota and Quebec where PRRS is also being investigated. BP



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Better Pork - August 2005

Beware the extra costs of 'just-in-case' insurance

The costs for protecting yourself against every "just in case" situation can add up to much more than your fire and liability insurance -- and that ain't cheap
by RICHARD SMELSKI
We think insurance is costly, but it is minimal compared to all the extra things we put into a swine operation for the sake of insurance.

We calculate vitamins in micrograms, medication in grams and vaccines in micro cubic centimetres. Then we don't know what the pig eats, often don't know what the disease is before lab diagnosis, nor the stress effect of vaccines.

We purchase extra horsepower, build extra spaces, add more micros than prescribed, soup-up rations, vaccinate for the impossible, clean until there is no immunity and then think insurance is costly.

The idea that if a little is good, "more is better" is a fallacy. Extra protein beyond what a pig can use is actually a nutritional cost to get rid of. Research is sparse on vitamin and micronutrient needs but a common philosophy is that "it's cheap and safe, so I'll put in extra, just in case."

Vaccines are more effective when they are injected in less stressful situations. But this in itself is an oxymoron. Is there ever an injection, or the process leading up to an injection, that does not create a stress? One of the biggest wastes is building for the "just in case"' situation. The insurance costs for the "just in case situation"' is much more than your fire and liability insurance -- and that ain't cheap.

Sometimes just reviewing the levels and procedures used in an operation are worthwhile. Too often, an operator may have changed the level of selenium or fibres, or the brand or procedures, over a year ago and the problem went away, so the decision does not get reviewed. Recommendations themselves change -- like footpaths in barns, PRRS protocols and feed intake levels. Recheck the levels, procedures, quotes, targets and returns. The best decision is going to be made with a data set, not on a hunch or a feeling. The better the data, the more accurate will be the decision and the less will be the insurance cost.

The biggest insurance cost is that incurred "for the sake of society." We need more land to put manure on or more buffers "just in case." We need condoms on manure tanks "just in case" they might leak. We need fire drills, certification courses, first aid courses, chain saw courses, manure management meetings, filling out forms meetings "just in case." These "just in case" social expenses are a big insurance cost with no expectation of a financial return. How much insurance can one afford, especially the ones imposed on you by society?

There are two ways to reduce your "insurance costs." One is to keep accurate yet simple records. Often, these records are not what bankers and tax people want but a record system that identifies the best flow of pigs for the least dollars invested. The records need to predict your performance, not give you a historic record to justify your best guess.

The second method is to do comparative studies. It is always impressive to see the expertise and data that exists among producers. Many operations have found a solution to a problem and are willing to share their successes and sometimes their failures. Benchmarking with your peers verifies and challenges perceptions and best guesses.

Use the opportunities you have to meet in clubs, organizations or neighbourhoods just to compare and share with your fellows what the cost of insurance could be.BP

Richard Smelski is general manager of Ontario Swine Improvement Inc. and a former Ontario government swine specialist.


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Better Pork - August 2005

The evolution of Nutrient Management

The road to a workable nutrient management policy has been a long one. Now it seems to be coming full circle and moving closer to the original idea of managing manure with fewer regulations and some beneficial best practices
by SAM BRADSHAW
A number of years ago, when we were attempting to explain to our children the frugal and exemplary way we used to live when we were their age, they would often say, "That was then, and this is now!" I think they were trying to tell us that we were out of date and they were more enlightened than we were. Of course, they were not any more enlightened and as they grew older, they realized this.

Nutrient management has followed a somewhat similar course. Back in the early 1990s, farm leaders saw the need for a strategy to account for the nutrients used on our farms. In the early 2000s, others felt they knew better and thought that farmers needed a much more onerous set of regulations in order to manage manure. Now, in 2005, we are closer to our original concept of managing manure with a few regulations and some beneficial management practices.

I'd like to chronicle the events leading up to where we stand with nutrient management as of July 2005.

The Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition (OFEC) was formed in 1991 to represent virtually all provincial farm organizations on issues that link farming and the environment. In 1998, OFEC developed and circulated a nutrient management planning strategy that involved careful accounting of all nutrients used on Ontario farms, citing two good reasons for doing this. First, it would improve a farmer's bottom line. Second, society wanted assurances that farmers were applying nutrients to their land in a responsible manner.

Many municipalities were enacting onerous bylaws limiting the ability of new or growing livestock facilities above a certain size to expand. OFEC worked closely with various provincial ministries to develop strategies that would meet society's heightened expectations. The discussion centred around the requirement that all farms in the province had to have a nutrient management plan. OFEC fully supported this requirement since it offered individual farmers, and agriculture in general, a more competitive future in Ontario.

Here is a chronology showing how nutrient management has evolved:

It was first proposed by farm groups in the mid 1990s as a way encourage best management practices for water quality and agronomic balances of nutrient and crops on the farm.

In 2000, as a result of the hearings conducted by MPPs Doug Galt and Toby Barrett, the government proposed the Agriculture Operations Act.

In late 2000, the government changed the focus of the proposed Act and initiated discussions on a potential Nutrient Management Act (NMA).

In December 2002, the government released a Consultation Draft to Ontario Regulation Made under the Nutrient Management Act 2002.

After extensive public consultation, a revised Regulation was released in March 2003. Contentious technical standards and issues were referred to a Nutrient Management Advisory Committee for further review and development.

The March 2003 revisions also dramatically altered the scope and phase-in schedule for the proposed Regulations.

These revisions also redefined the roles and responsibilities. It was determined that the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food (OMAF) would have responsibility over the approving of NM plans, and would be the first point of contact for enforcement. The role of the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) in enforcement was to be minimized.

In December 2003, the newly elected government reversed this position.

In May 2004, the Ontario budget highlighted $20 million dollars for the planned implementation of NMA regulations for larger farms (established by government to be those farms over 300 nutrient units). This was primarily for capital costs such as construction.

On April 19, 2004, the Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition (OFEC) was invited to the Minister's Nutrient Management Advisory Committee to present its key principles regarding the regulations that accompany the NMA. The principles presented were as follows:

  • Regulatory technical standards that meet the criteria of needed, practical and affordable;
  • No phase in of regulations without funding;
  • 24 months of lead time between funding availability and expectation of regulatory compliance;
  • Funding levels between 70 percent and 90 percent;
  • Funding available for all costs associated with compliance, including capital, administration, operating and lost production
  • The regulations in the NMA must supersede municipal by-laws.
In April 2005, OMAF proposed a new, simplified, risk-based approach to Nutrient Management. Key features of this risk-based version (still at the proposal stage at the time of writing) are as follows:

  1. For the short term, the government will introduce an interim nutrient management policy. For the long term, nutrient management will be targeted based on risk and linked to Source Protection.
  2. Only farmers within 100 metres of a municipal well need to submit a Nutrient Management Plan/Nutrient Management Strategy to OMAF for approval.
  3. Existing operations greater than 300 NU and all new and expanding ones, regardless their size, need only register that they have completed a Nutrient Management Plan/Nutrient Management Strategy.
  4. Farmers now have a choice of how they balance nutrients. They do not need to use OMAF's NMAN nutrient management software.
  5. There is a streamlined and focused set of NM rules which specify, among other things, that winter spreading standards still apply and that runoff management is still required for feedlots.
  6. The provincial funding program cap has been doubled to $60,000 per farm unit. Now, with federal funding added, funding levels are 90 per cent, up to $90,000 per farm.
Risk management is the process of controlling risk to acceptable levels. This new approach may involve a combination of prohibition, regulation, recommended voluntary best practices and incentives to ensure risk remains at an acceptably low level.

This proposed model looks at the risk associated with two variables, namely agricultural activity and geographic location. Assignment of risk levels to activities and geography is done based on the characterization of the activity as a threat to sustainability and the vulnerable nature of the geographic area. If the continuum of risk is simplified to a low, medium or high rating, then the relationship between a specific activity and a specific location would yield one of three possible outcomes.

For example:

  • If the combined farm and geographic risk were defined as a High-High combination, then mandatory measures would be put in place to mitigate the risk.
  • If the combined farm/geographic risk was Low Medium, Low High, High Medium, Medium Medium , a combination of mandatory measures and best management practices would be applied.
  • If on the other hand, the combined risk was low, best management practices might be used to mitigate this risk.

Done properly, this approach will go a long way to enhance and protect the environment in this province. BP

Sam Bradshaw is environmental specialist with Ontario Pork


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