China to stockpile frozen pork

China will begin stockpiling frozen pork in an attempt to prop up falling meat prices, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on May 15.

Stockpiling is planned to begin when the price per kilogram of live pigs remains at between 5.5 and 6 times the price of a kilogram of corn for four consecutive weeks. A state-owned storage facility is currently being built.

China’s pork industry is facing a glut, as the number of live pigs increased 8.5% compared with last year, to a total of 449 million head in March 2009, according to government statistics. Meanwhile, the wholesale price of pork fell to 14.49 yuan per kilo on May 10, a drop of over 22% compared to the beginning of this year.

China’s Sichuan province announced its own frozen pork stockpile plan earlier this month, reported the Chengdu-based West China City Daily newspaper.

In January six ministries jointly announced a plan to increase restrictions on pork imports.

China’s customs statistics showed that pork imports to Guangdong province decreased to 28,000 metric tons during the first quarter of 2009, a drop of 48.4% compared with the same period last year.

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Central America responds to flu threat

Central America is in the earliy stages of responding to the threat posed by H1N1 flu that has affected Mexico and the U.S., according to Noticen.  The region is on alert, with El Salvador appearing to have taken the most decisive measures so far. President Antonio Saca has declared a state of emergency. The decree permits the Ministry of Health to request funds from the treasury to obtain medications and make whatever other expenditures it deems necessary to prevent and treat.  Saca said he had ordered the treasury to stand ready to make the disbursements and also to provide personnel to observe people entering the country for signs of the disease. Also, pork imports from the U.S., Mexico and Canada have been suspended. Interrupting commercial flows is a sensitive measure, so Agriculture Minister Mario Salaverria quickly went public to announce, “It is a temporary measure. We must have clarity where and how this problem originated, how this virus is transmitted to humans. It is a precautionary measure we have taken.”  He explained that it was not El Salvador’s idea, and it was not alone in doing it. He said it was a joint decision of agriculture ministers of the isthmus at an April 24 meeting. El Salvador normally imports about 69,000 kg of pork a month from the U.S. and Mexico. Salaverria said that supplies on hand were sufficient to avoid shortages and that domestically grown pigs are constantly monitored and are disease free. Nicaragua also suspended pork and pig imports but very quickly reinstated pork products other than live pigs, even though, according to an official, Nicaragua does not import live pigs from Mexico.  The region’s health ministers met in Managua on April 28 to agree on an emergency plan. The ministers decided upon health decrees like the one Saca issued, as well as monitoring and mass prevention campaigns. They also contributed to a regional-impact analysis, given the particular vulnerabilities occasioned by poverty and scarce resources. Prevention campaigning involved the media in region-wide messages with recommendations and instructions for personal and collective hygienic practices, and explanations of facts concerning the disease. In Costa Rica there were two confirmed cases of H1N1, both had arrived by air from Mexico.

Safe to eat pork says USDA, CDC

The US Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control said it is safe to eat pork.

USDA secretary Tom Vilsack said swine flu can’t be contracted from eating pork as the virus is not transmitted through food.

About 65 people in the US, 1,300 in Mexico, and people in Canada, Europe, Asia-Pacific countries and the Middle East have been infected by the hybrid influenza.

The US National Pork Board, too, has asked producers to increase biosecurity protocol in their farms.

Meanwhile, the World Organization for Animal Health stressed the flu should not be called “swine flu” as it contained avian and human components, according to a Reuters report. Also, there are no reports of pig being infected with it.

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USDA awards $11 million for animal genomics

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack awarded more than $11 million in grants to 15 states to support research, education and outreach in animal genomics, which is expected to enhance the protection and safety of agriculture and the food supply.

“President Obama understands that to remain globally competitive in the livestock business and to continue to produce safe, nutritious products from livestock requires the application of cutting-edge genetics and breeding programs,” Vilsack said. “Investing in good basic and applied research will help pinpoint genetic differences that result in superior animal products of the best quality for the consumer.”

Successful application of this research will reduce the number and severity of animal disease outbreaks and decrease dependence on the widespread use of antibiotics, said Vilsack.

For a list of universities receiving the grants, click here.

Piglet feed supplements support immune systems

As feed costs rise and the production of ethanol from corn grain increases, swine producers have ramped up their search for new feed supplements for younger swine. According to studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists, feeding dried distiller’s grains (DDGS) to piglets can give their immune systems an extra boost.

The U.S. ethanol industry generates an estimated 10-14 million metric tons of DDGS annually from the milling of corn grain that yields fermentable sugars for conversion into fuel alcohol. The majority of DDGS are fed to beef and dairy cattle.

But livestock producers also use DDGS to supplement the diet of older pigs. So Tom Weber, a physiologist at the ARS Swine Odor and Manure Management Research Unit in Ames, Iowa, partnered with research leader Brian Kerr and microbiologist Cherie Ziemer to study the effects of feeding DDGS to young pigs.

For their research on piglets, the team divided weanling pigs into four groups and fed them either a standard control diet or diets supplemented with DDGS, soybean hulls or citrus pulp. After one week, the researchers observed an increase in cytokine expression in the pigs’ small intestine, which they linked to DDGS consumption. Cytokines are chemical messengers that are essential for proper immune function.

This response reinforced findings of previous DDGS studies showing that pigs consuming diets supplemented with DDGS exhibited reduced levels of ileitis, a common inflammation of the small intestine.

Kerr and others have found that adult pigs can be fed with a corn and soy-meal feed that is up to 40% DDGS. However, piglets are given feed with a maximum DDG content of 7.5%, because their growth may be reduced when they consume too much fiber.

Read more about this research in the February 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

US swine inventories in decline

US swine inventories in nearly all classifications are on the decline, the US Department of Agriculture’s December Hogs and Pigs report shows, say Iowa State University economists John Lawrence and Shane Ellis.

Total hog and pig numbers declined 2.2% to 66.7 million head. The inventory of breeding swine declined 2.4% to 6.1 million head, while market hog numbers were down 2.1% from last year at 60.6 million head.

In Iowa, market hog numbers were up 2.2% at 18.7 million head while sow numbers declined a percent to 1.1 million head. The decreased pig crop in the fourth quarter of 2008 and reduced imports from Canada have driven feeder pig inventories down more than 5%. With farrowing intentions down in the next six months, the retraction of the industry continues, say Lawrence and Ellis.

Label of origin rule likely to decrease exports of Canadian hogs to US

The final US mandatory Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) rule issued earlier this month is likely to reduce shipments of live Canadian hogs to the United States, but increase exports of finished Canadian pork. Enforcement of the rule begins in April.

“My expectation is we’re probably going to see fewer hogs coming south into the United States and more pork,” says Dr Ron Plain, University of Missouri (USA) economist. “In fact, we seem to be trending up a little bit in hog slaughter in Canada,” he says in Farmscape online.

“I think when we look at the complications associated with record keeping and labelling and verifying the correct label that lots of times it’s going to end up more sensible and lower cost to slaughter hogs in Canada and send the pork south already labelled than it will be to send the hogs south,” Plain says.

“If you try to handle animals from more than one country on the same day, it becomes a real record keeping segregation challenge unless you’re going to just label it all US and Canada, so a lot of plants are wanting to go with only one label,” he adds.

USDA lowers corn price estimate

The US Department of Agriculture lowered its 2008-09 average corn price estimate to a range of $3.55 to $4.25/bushel in a 12 January report, 10 cents below the previous month’s estimate. The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) place this year’s soybean prices at $8.50 to $9.50 per bushel compared with an estimate of $8.25 to $9.75/bushel last month. Soybean meal prices are projected at $250 to $310 per short ton, up $10 on both ends of the range. On wheat, the projected season-average farm price is narrowed 10 cents on both ends of the range to a projection of of $6.50 to $6.90/bushel.

On coarse grains, USDA reduced feed and residual use by 50 million bushels, reflecting lower animal numbers and September-November disappearance as indicated by 1 December stocks. In addition, the department lowered ethanol use by 100 million bushels as sustained negative ethanol production margins have reduced incentives for ethanol output.

Looking at other crops, the sorghum season average farm price is lowered 10 cents to $2.90 to $3.50/bushel; barley narrowed 10 cents to $4.95 to $5.35/bushel; and the estimate for oats was raised 10 cents to $2.90 to $3.10.

The WASDE report reflects a lower meat production estimate from the previous month, with reduced 2009 broiler and pork production. Beef production forecasts for 2009 are unchanged.

Mong Reththy Group pork project to include feedmill

The Mong Reththy Group in Cambodia has plans for a pork project that also includes adding a feedmill with a projected output of 330,000 metric tons per year. In addition to boosting local pork production, the project would increase the incomes of corn, cassava and soybean farmers, while creating employment and new opportunities for production, says Kao Phal, director of the Animal Health and Production Department at the Ministry of Agriculture. Mong Reththy has set up a new company called M’s Pig ACMC in association with UK breeder ACMC, with which it has agreed a 20-year franchise deal. ACMC will deliver 600 breeding pigs for a new unit on a five-hectare site in the Prey Nop district of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, which will house a nucleus herd. Eventually this unit will supply enough commercial AC1 sows to produce 1.1 million slaughter pigs per year by 2015. The project also involves a slaughter/process plant for the pigs.

U.S. FDA reverses order on animal antibiotics

Extra-label drug use of cephalosporin now permitted.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revoked a prior order that would have prohibited the “extralabel” use of cephalosporin antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals. The original order would have taken effect on November 30. The FDA said it revoked the order so that it could “fully consider the many substantive comments it received on the order of prohibition.”

Extralabel drug use refers to the use of a veterinary drug in a manner for which it was not approved, similar to off-label drug use in human medications. Extralabel drug use occurs when a drug only approved for human use is used in animals, when a drug approved for one species of animal is used in another species or when a drug is used to treat a condition for which it was not approved. Only veterinarians are allowed to prescribe drugs extralabel.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the FDA’s submission this year to ban extralabel uses of cephalosporin antibiotic drugs in “food-producing” animals such as cows, swine, and chickens met with industry criticism. Some agriculture groups and animal-drug makers argued that the drugs are necessary for infectious disease prevention in animals, said the Journal.

The FDA said that since it received many substantive comments on the order of prohibition, it was revoking its earlier regulation and would allow cephalosporin use in these animals. However, the agency added that if after considering the comments and other relevant information, it decides to issue another order of prohibition addressing the matter, it would provide for a public comment period prior to implementing the order.