Better Pork - June 2016

Better Pork

June 2016

BEYOND

THE

BARN

PRRS-resistant hog a ‘potential

game changer’

British-based hog breeder

Genus plc

has quickly li-

censed

University of Missouri

gene-editing research

expected to produce pigs that can resist porcine

reproduction and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

Missouri biologist

Randall Prather

announced

the disease-resistance breakthrough in an article

late last year in the journal

Nature Biotechnology

Genus—which has headquarters in Basingstoke,

England, and 500 breeding hog herds in 35 countries,

including Canada—announced its licensing agree-

ment soon afterward as a “potential game changer for

the pork industry.”

PRRS is a costly viral disease among hogs, causes

a high mortality rate and has no effective vaccine

to date, a University of Missouri statement says. A

PRRS-resistant hog is also among the first commer-

cial products of CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing

technology first demonstrated in 2013. An acronym

for the term “clustered, regularly interspaced, short,

palindromic repeat,”CRISPR refers to a naturally-

ocurring gene-editing process that aids the immune

responses of bacteria. Gene editing has been adapted

for use in genetic engineering.

Missouri’s researchers used gene-editing process

to disable production of a protein that aids the spread

of the PRRS virus within the host animal. Similar

research at the University of Edinburgh’s

Roslin

Institute

has altered domesticated pigs to imitate

the natural immunity to African swine fever among

warthogs, according to the institute’s website.

Genus officials expect it will take five years to

bring PRRS-resistant hogs to market.

Stratford hopes bacon

and ale will lure

Shakespeare buffs

Tourism officials in Stratford,

Ont. are making the most of

the Perth County seat’s close

association with hogs through

Bacon and Ale Trail

promo-

tion for visitors. Among Perth’s

2,400 census farms are 379 hog

operations that have annual re-

ceipts exceeding $142 million.

The city has been home to the

annual

Ontario Pork Congress

for more than 40 years and

describes Perth as Ontario’s top

pork-producing county.

A $25 pass available at

visitstratford.ca

or in person

entitles pass holders to tastings of

unique bacon and beer samples

at five of 13 pub, restaurant or

food shop locations. It includes

discounts on bacon purchases

at the

Best Little Pork Shoppe

near the village of Shakespeare,

jalapeno poppers with caramel-

ized red onion/bacon marma-

lade at the

Boar’s Head Pub

Ontario Street in Stratford and

house-made charcuterie from

whey-fed pigs at

Monforte

Dairy

on Wellington Street in

Stratford.

Rocky Mountain Choco-

late Factory

offers chocolate-

covered toffee with smoky

bacon flavour. Among other

things porky in area restaurants,

there’s a pork plate tapas at

the

Bijou Restaurant

on Erie

Street, and

Madelyn’s Diner

on Huron Street offers a half-

pound butter tart containing

finely chopped bacon.

Turning manure

mountains into gold

European researchers hope to

reduce pollution from livestock

manure and cut back on the use of

synthetic fertilizers by converting

mountains of manure into more

manageable mineral and soil con-

ditioning products, a statement

by the Stuttgart-based research

engineering firm

Fraunhofer IGB

says.

Project manager

Jennifer

Bilbao

has led a consortium

of 15 partners from Holland,

Poland, Spain and Germany in

a demonstration pilot project at

Kupferzell, Germany. Extensive

field trial studies funded by the

European Union since 2012 have

shown that mineral fertilizer and

soil conditioners processed from

hog manure “can be used directly

in agricultural field operations

as fertilizer and humus-building

substrates,” Bilbao said in the

statement.

The process saves on the use

of synthetic fertilizers and on the

large energy requirements used

to produce them. It reduces raw

manure to about four per cent of

original volume. Processing ma-

nure in this way also offers a po-

tential solution to increasing costs

for storing and safely distributing

about 1,800 million cubic metres

of livestock manure produced an-

nually on European farms.

The Kupferzell demonstra-

tion project uses the facilities of

AgroEnergy Hohenlohe.

So far, the project has convert-

ed pig manure to useable phos-

phate and nitrogen minerals and

organic biochar.