'Welfare Pig' meat nets a premium over conventional pork

Monday, February 3, 2014

Top European slaughter concerns feel there's now real consumer interest in a "middle way" for marketing high-quality pork with production regulations that lie between organic and conventional.    

by NORMAN DUNN

The European pork market last year indicates increasing consumer interest in what used to be called the "welfare label niche markets."

Helped not a little by the 2013 horsemeat scandal, U.K. pork certified as produced on British farms under special welfare conditions now earns a C$0.17-a-kilogram premium over conventionally produced ware. So reports the "Freedom Food" organization, under whose regulations just under 30 per cent (2.3 million) of all slaughter hogs are now reared and sold on the British market. The British Pig Executive (BPEX) reports this autumn that sales of pork products under the Freedom Food label have increased by 200 per cent between 2009 and 2012.

The Freedom Food scheme is monitored by the U.K. animal protection society (RSPCA), with production rules for hogs including minimum 28 days weaning and 15 per cent more floor space in feeding pens (e.g. 0.75 square metres for a 100-kilogram liveweight hog). No tail docking is allowed and sows can only be restrained in farrowing pens for a maximum five days post-partum. Full traceability is required for all meat marketed under the Freedom Food label – not a necessity for this welfare label, but a feature more and more popular with British consumers is outdoor farrowing. Nowadays, 40 per cent of hogs in Britain are produced from outdoor-sow systems.

Denmark is now also planning a welfare label for its pork products with regulations including no tail cutting. A new feature in this plan is group housing for suckling sows with sow restraint only over three or four days post-partum. Straw available at any time for the animals is also part of the new "Welfare Pig" strategy planned by leading slaughterhouses Danish Crown and Tican in co-operation with Danish Pig Research.

Also contributing know-how are welfare groups in Britain, Sweden and Denmark. Peter Mollerup, chairman of the Danish welfare organization "Dyrenes Venner" (Animals' Friends),  comments: "I believe that consumers will be prepared to pay a bit extra to reflect these significant welfare improvements."

Danish Crown, which slaughters 14.5 million hogs and 300,000 fat sows per year, says it will pay farmers a bonus of C$ 0.40 a kilogram for hogs meeting the requirements. Danish Crown and Tican (1.76 million slaughtered swine per year) expect the new scheme to be phased in over the next seven years, although first farms already meeting all the Welfare Pig requirements should have labelled wares in the stores starting January 2014.

Both slaughterhouses still see conventionally reared and fed hogs as the sector's mainstay. Store prices for the new Welfare Pig meat are expected to be 10 to 15 per cent more than standard pork products, but still substantially below price levels for organically produced pork.

Hog farmers trusted more than politicians
No single food gets more negative headlines heaped on it in Europe than meat. And a look at the serial scandals created in this sector shows there's indeed plenty to beef about.

Comforting, therefore, are the results of a nationwide survey in Germany aimed at finding out exactly who the meat-buying public think they can trust when it comes to information about origin, production and quality of the products for sale in butchers, grocery stores and supermarkets.

Farmers and their families were thought by 90 per cent of respondents in the GfK Panel Services survey to be either absolutely (55 per cent) or at least generally (35.5 per cent) trustworthy in their food production and reporting. For European consumers, not usually known for sympathetic opinions about agriculture, this is a pretty good result. For instance, only 16 per cent of respondents felt they could trust politicians on questions of food production and safety. Even supermarkets came out of the survey as only trusted by 21 per cent – although specialists such as butchers had an even higher trust rating than farmers at 92 per cent.

'All you can eat' better than four meals a day
Leave hogs with continual access to ad lib feed and they'll come back for more an average eight times a day. But, over the whole feeding period, the ad lib feeders actually eat less than hogs on regulated four-times-per-day trough feeding, with almost the same weight gain performance. At least this is what Dutch researchers at the University of Wageningen Sterksel Swine Innovation Centre found this year.

They compared hog performance with two popular Dutch systems: automatic individual hog-feeding stations with continuous access or long troughs with feeding space for all hogs and liquid feed pumped in four times per day. Lean meat percentage with the ad lib feeders was also best, at an average 78.6 per cent, topping the trough feeders by exactly 0.9 per cent. The hogs with regulated feeding returned a better feed conversion figure on average, although at 2.96 against 3.02:1 this advantage wasn't considered statistically significant.

A total of 228 male and female swine were involved in the trial, penned in batches of 12 animals.

Country of origin soon compulsory in European pork labelling?
Higher swine welfare regulations in countries such as Britain and Sweden don't come cheap for the farmers concerned. More barn space, straw litter and extra labour input all add to the investment needed. The main way of recovering this extra input is through value-added domestic sales.
British swine farmers and their management and marketing support organization BPEX have run welfare-based "buy British pork" campaigns for years now. There's a problem that won't go away, though. Unscrupulous chain stores sell imported pork, giving the impression that it's high-welfare British produce and therefore worth a higher price. Often all that's needed to complete the subterfuge is a strategically-placed British flag.

Now BPEX has added DNA testing to its armament for protecting British pork. Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis (SIRA) can, it is claimed, accurately identify the country of origin, or at least determine the countries that definitely did not produce the pork in question. Recently, BBC television bought pork chops labelled as produced in Britain from a store in the north of England. The new SIRA test showed that the chops were definitely from another country.

Now pressure from western European countries with generally higher meat production costs – because of labour, building, environmental and welfare demands – has encouraged the European Union to plan international legislation against false, or ambiguous, labelling of pork and poultry regarding source (laws are already in force covering other meat in this respect). While the proposed legislation will not demand traceability right back to the farm of birth, labelling will have to indicate where the animals concerned were fed for the last two months of life and where slaughter took place. The proposed labelling must allow meat to be traced back to individual groups of animals – for instance, pen groups in the feed barn. On top of this, should a batch of meat actually come from hogs fed in a number of countries, then all the countries involved will have to be given on the new label. The legislation is planned to cover all pork joints as well as processed meat products.

Weaners: extra ballast beats diarrhea
Having problems with weaner diarrhea? Recent Bavarian research indicates that just a small extra helping of crude fibre in the diet could be the cheapest solution. Scientists from the state swine research center at Schwarzenau reduced diarrhea cases (and improved overall feed conversion) by increasing ration crude fibre (CF) content by just two per cent.

A group of 196 weaners were fed from nine to 29 kilograms liveweight over five weeks. Half the piglets were on conventional rearing rations, including three per cent CF, and half on five per cent. The CF included apple pulp, sugar beet pulp, soybean hulls and wheat germ, plus two per cent additional soya oil to meet the expected extra energy demand in the higher fibre group.

The Bavarian researchers found that the extra-fibre weaners returned a daily liveweight gain of 508 grams, a bit more than the control group's 494 grams. The extra-fibre group also achieved a better feed conversion ratio at 1.58:1 (control: 1.60:1). Testing for dung consistency showed that almost all the higher fibre weaners had firmer manure. This group had only three animals that needed treatment for diarrhea. The control group included five diarrhea cases.

Adding more fibre to the ration did hike the costs, however – at C$0.82 per kilogram weight gain against the control group's C$0.79. Because of this, the Bavarian researchers reckon that a real return for extra crude fibre in weaner rations will only be realizable where there's a continuous problem with diarrhea in the weaner barn. BP