Investing In Welfare

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Industry Renews Support For Swine Research Chair

By Matt Jones

During the 2025 Banff Pork Seminar in January, Dr. Yolande Seddon was again named the University of Saskatchewan’s research chair in swine welfare. The position being renewed involved a more than $1 million investment over five years by 14 pork industry partners. Upon the renewal of her position, Dr. Seddon spoke with Better Pork about how she has worked to serve the industry and what she sees as the newest frontiers of pork-related research.

“It is a significant achievement, I think, and it’s great that the whole industry has come together for this,” says Seddon.

Seddon agrees when it is suggested that the fact that the industry is willing to invest that funding in renewing the position speaks volumes to the value the industry feels it gets from having a swine research chair.

“The first chair term was the first time that the whole industry had come together and put money forward for an initiative on swine welfare at this scale,” says Seddon. “There was some trepidation about ‘where is this going to go?’ But with the renewal, it confirms that they have seen value in it, and the uptick in momentum that we have been able to create, and the results we’re bringing, and that there’s value in such a position to support strategic research in an area that is very important to the industry and is not always easy to get funded and to do well.”

Seddon continues that a good working relationship between researcher and industry is needed to truly tackle some of the challenges that exist in swine welfare. She says she has seen an uptick in industry engagement in research since taking the position.

“This second round, they very much left it to me to develop the research ideas,” says Seddon. “They provided inputs, but they put their trust in me. We had a call organized by the Swine Innovation Porc two weeks ago where we had all the industry partners on the call providing input on research ideas that we are discussing and there was a vote on industry priorities.”

Why a research chair?

Readers who are unfamiliar with the concept may not immediately see the value of having a research chair for a particular topic. Certainly, even if Seddon’s position didn’t exist, research into topics of swine welfare would still be carried out. However, many faculty members of universities who conduct such research also spend much of their time teaching and will often have to focus on broader topics.

“With the creation of a research chair, my faculty position at the University of Saskatchewan is research intensive, so I have minimal teaching duties, less admin work, specifically so that I can focus on research and then build that into the swine industry. My mandate is specifically to listen to their needs and address the research priorities. It really provides some kind of rocket fuel to make sure that there are specific needs addressed.”

Highlights of the first term

Seddon says that in the first chair period, the research group applied for money from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), which matched funding provided by industry. Seddon met with a wide variety of industry reps and learned about their needs, and then helped to focus research on those needs.

“The research, for example, showed that through simple management strategies early in the life of the pig, we can actually shape their behaviour development by providing tubal material around the creep feeder, by providing a little bit more space in the farrowing room,” says Seddon.

“Which, when you consider larger litter sizes, now is important to consider so more space can also support social development, and that when a producer is checking their pens to do so calmly, so that you can build a positive human-animal relationship. So we had pigs that were less fearful, less reactive. When they were mixed, they resulted in less injury and they actually transitioned weaning better. Pigs that had these treatments in weaning and nursery grew better in the nursery and had a better lifelong average daily gain, and also had reduced tail biting in the nursery period.”

A second research goal was to look at play behaviour of pigs and to see if there was anything that could be used as a tool by industry to increase welfare and resilience. What they found was that through simple enrichment routines, which producers are already required to provide as part of the Code of Practice, you can support the expression of these natural pig behaviours beyond the period of its natural expression.

“Normally, it appears as a young piglet, two to six weeks of age, and it teaches them social skills to prepare for the unexpected, but through enrichment routines that are intermittent, you can create a positive even where pigs will start to play again at an increased frequency.

“This increased frequency of play expression was associated with behaviours that we understand are indicative of a positive affective state when looking at the tail and ears, and we also assessed their cognitive bias.”

Pigs that were reared with these enrichment routines were less fearful and recovered better from a virus challenge, and had a lower inflammatory effect in their immune response. This information can then be used by industry to support producers considering enrichment routines.

Other research goals during the first term included looking at biomarkers and chronic stress and developing animal-based indicators of welfare.

Seddon acknowledges that not every effort to improve swine welfare will result in a benefit on the bottom line for the farmer, but a great many of them will result in better growth and a better feed conversion ratio.

“It’s not necessarily always getting to 100 per cent to deliver a benefit to industry, but we need to understand, what is the effect on the pig? From an ethical standpoint, is this something that’s important and needs to be considered?”

To the future

Asked about current industry (and research) priorities, Seddon pointed to converting to group housing as an ongoing challenge. This process has a financial cost and has resulted in a lot of trial and error for the early adopters who are pursuing it.

“As we keep moving towards this, the designs that get put in place are going to influence the profitability and the welfare of the animals for years to come,” says Seddon.

“Once the designs are in place, it could be a while before you change that design.”

Asked about the newest frontiers for swine welfare research in the future, Seddon notes that more and more work is being done looking at gut health and microbiomes. Much of that effort has focused on reducing antibiotic use and supporting pigs to grow efficiently.

“I think it’s a complimentary, exciting area that could support sustainable farm systems and could also add information to help reduce tail biting,” says Seddon. “We understand that there is a sort of a nutritional gut access link into tail biting, because obviously serotonin is also being produced in the gut and this is part of that interaction – pigs that tail bite have changes in serotonin levels.

“What I’m trying to say is there’s some exciting areas here,” adds Seddon. “In understanding these interactions on a fundamental level, there might be some breakthroughs to help in a range of areas, from reducing antibiotic use to reducing tail biting and being able to rear pigs in fully slanted systems that are at low risk of tail biting would also be quite special.” BP