Innovative minds could win up to $46,000 for their amazing ideas on how to tackle a pork industry challenge. The Pork Checkoff invites producers ages 18 and over to participate in the first-ever Pork Industry Innovation Challenge. The 2022 challenge focuses on foreign animal disease mortality management.
“COVID-19 taught us how innovative the pork industry is as we moved forward in our pursuit of supplying pork to consumers,” Patrick Webb, DVM, assistant chief veterinarian at the National Pork Board, said during an African swine fever panel at the 2022 National Pork Industry Forum. The National Pork Board is encouraging U.S. producers to share their ideas on how to handle pig mortality disposal in new and innovative ways.
The closure and slowdown of U.S. packing plants during the pandemic and the ongoing foreign animal disease threat underscore the pork industry’s need for improvement in the area of pig mortality disposal beyond existing methods such as burial, incineration, composting and landfills.
This challenge focuses on providing pork producers with more options for on-farm pig mortality disposal if needed. Winning methods could be used on farms if there were to be a foreign animal disease outbreak, such as African swine fever, in the U.S.
For more information, visit porkcheckoff.org/challenge.
More from Farm Journal’s PORK:
From Joe Theismann to Real Pork: Producers Share Hot Topics at Pork Forum
Sustainability and the Pork Industry: Make Money, Save Money, Save Time
