Beyond the Barn

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Small hobby farmers remain a risk to Romania’s policy for preventing the spread of swine diseases, according to a report published by the European Food and Veterinary Office (EFVO).

Romania has long been plagued by outbreaks of Classical Swine Fever. The EFVO report, written after a visit to Romania last March, charges that targets for inspection and vaccination are not being met. Computerized identification and registration of livestock has technical issues. Transportation to and from those small farms is not well developed.

Until 2007, Romania had many problems with Classical Swine Fever. However, the veterinary office did not find new cases of swine fever and the risk for new infections is considered to be low.

The biggest cost for third-generation pig farmer Andrew Haag as he starts an outdoor unit for 750 sows at Caistor St Edmund, near Norwich in eastern England, is piping water to the sows.

Online local business publication EDP 24 says the 80-acre farm draws a lot of attention because it is within sight of a highway overpass and thousands of motorists. Haag already finishes 170 pigs a week at another farm and sells the pork to the Morrisons grocery chain.

He’s hoping the high visibility of his operation will be good for local business because consumers like to see pigs outdoors. He plans to sell finished hogs to local butchers. An advantage from a biosecurity point of view is that there are no other pig herds nearby.

Want to be a profitable pig farmer? Go west young man, way west. All the way to the district of Dakshina Kannada in India, where the first pig co-operative in the state of Karnataka was inaugurated in late October.  According to The Times of India, Mangalore legislative assembly member N. Yogist Bhat says pig rearing, with a profit of 60 per cent, topped all other types of farming such as poultry, with a mere 30 per cent return, sheep, 22 per cent and dairy with a 10 per cent profit.

According to Canwest News and Reuters News Service, Edmund Ndizeye, a farm pig herdsman in Urwibutso, Rwanda, plays hip-hop, reggae, rhythm and blues, and even a bit of Canadian Shania Twain’s country music to his pigs. He claims rearing pigs with music doubles their yields in terms of offspring, quality of the meat and their weight.

They get a diet of soft tunes from Celine Dion and Bob Marley to help them digest after eating restaurant and juice plant leftovers, and aggressive dance tracks later to make the boars more virile.

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A proposed rule, published June 22 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), regarding the marketing of livestock and poultry will limit consumer choice and drive up costs, according to Republican Senator Pat Roberts from Kansas. He called for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration to undertake a cost benefit analysis of the rule, which amends the Packers and Stockyards Act.

Roberts, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, says the rule prohibits creative arrangements between producers and packers necessary for branded meat products.

Oklahoma State University economist Bailey Norwood presented his research on how consumers feel about animal welfare to a joint meeting of animal scientists in Denver in July. 

According to Norwood, most U.S. citizens view gestation crates and pens as unethical. Educating consumers by providing objective information makes them oppose these cages more.

One third of Americans believe animals have a soul. More than two thirds “believe that God wants humans to be good stewards of animals, and placing animals in small cages does not constitute good stewardship.”

Only a slight majority of people desire to ban livestock practices they believe unethical, even if products from animals raised in an ethical manner are available to them.

Given a choice, some pregnant sows simply choose to stay in their 26-inch wide gestation stalls, according to research conducted by the Prairie Swine Centre in Saskatchewan, published on the website of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians.

The study found that 95 per cent of the sows left their stalls at some point to be in a group area but, over 24 hours, about 40 per cent spent less than two per cent of their time outside the stalls. Other animals spent 80 to 90 per cent of their time outside the stalls in a common area with other gestating animals.

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