Future challenges and opportunities for the pig sector were common themes at JSR Genetics’ annual technical conference, held at Nottingham University last week. Angela Calvert reports.
WORLD pork production needs to more than double over the next 40 years to meet the demands of a growing population.
This was the message from Dr Grant Walling, managing director of JSR Genetics, who said world population was predicted to rise by 29 per cent and meat consumption estimated to go up by 60 per cent. He said this was due to populations in developing countries including more meat in their diets in the future.
“We need a whole different ball game if we are to make some difference - we can’t just keep doing what we are doing,” he said.
Production systems in the UK are already very efficient, so increased output could not come solely from improved efficiency. There are biological limits, such as uterine capacity and gestation length, as well as legislative and infrastructural restrictions as to how many piglets a sow can produce in a year, said Dr Walling, so it would be impossible to double this.
However, if countries which were currently developing their pig production systems, such as Russia, China and Brazil, could bring their units up to UK standards they could achieve a 60 per cent improvement, which would increase world pork output by more than 30 per cent, he said.
New technology is vital to improve performance said Dr Walling and he suggested cloning could make a big difference to increasing output.
Cloning would reduce variation, make use of proven genetics, give consistency of product and pigs could be tailor-made to order, he said. By cloning the best performing sows in the herd the number of pigs born alive could increase by 62 per cent.
GM crops
The use of GM crops also has the potential to increase pig production said Dr Walling. For example, crops which were drought tolerant, required less inputs and had more yield would contribute to more pigs produced per acre of wheat.
A combination of all these factors could see world pork production increase by more than 110 per cent, which would meet the predicted targets. However, this would not happen without making use of the latest technology, he said.
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