“Robustness” is a popular term in the pork industry, used for everything from describing product lines to weaned pig health to the overall strength of the industry. As the industry continues to focus on productivity and efficiency, signs point to a growing number of fragile points that could open doors for disasters, says Cesar Corzo, associate professor at University of Minnesota and director of the Swine Health Monitoring Project.
“We’re pushing so hard, and we’re looking for throughput of 110%,” Corzo says. “If we push too hard, we may be starting to cut corners.”
Corzo was one of a group of industry executives who spoke on Thursday at World Pork Expo about strategies for creating predictability in an unpredictable market.
Biosecurity: A Shared Industry Responsibility
Those swine health risks include re-emerging pathogens from decades past as well as continuously evolving risks, such as porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRS). Managing diseases and other risks requires dedication to biosecurity on individual operations and across the industry, says panel moderator and veterinarian Clayton Johnson of Carthage Systems.
“It’s not just fragility at the individual farm level. As an industry, we’ve learned recently with pseudorabies being identified on a commercial pig farm that biosecurity and risk management isn’t just for your farm. It’s for all our ability to operate and market our pigs and optimize the entire industry,” Johnson says. “In terms of biocontainment, we’ve got to think, ‘How can I not only do a good job of preventing risk on my farm but also preventing risk for the industry?’”
Overcome the Data Integrity Hurdle
The industry has never been able to record and analyze data like it can today. Cameras, smart ear tags, smart scales and other networked technology make it possible to continuously monitor the behavior of pigs and people to predict and identify risks. Unfortunately, the data itself can be a challenge that sneaks up on operations, says PJ Corns, technical director for JBS Live Pork.
“One thing that feels like it’s both easy to fix and really tough is having good data,” Corns says. “When we don’t have good data coming in, we spend a lot of time sorting through to find the problem. Every minute we spend on looking at why data is wrong, it seems like we lose threefold. Bad data is that hidden challenge that’s out there.”
Johnson sees that same problem when called to troubleshoot at an operation.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showered into a sow farm, talked to the manager and said, ‘Alright, prewean mortality is X. We have got to bring it down this month,’” Johnson explains. “The first thing the farm manager says is, ‘No, it’s not. That’s not what my numbers say.’ Oh, man, do we waste hours in the office arguing about what the data is and never get to the actual root cause of the problem.”
A best practice for any operation to improve data management is to choose for itself the metrics that are most relevant to monitor and analyze, as opposed to comparing oneself to industry averages, says Sebastian Villegas, CEO of Asimetrics, an analytics company from Colombia.
“Ten years ago, it was difficult just to get internet access and to get people to just look at the numbers,” Villegas says. “Now, everyone wants to have more proprietary, but again, you can get confused with all the data. It is very important for every production site to have its own numbers and create its own guides.”
Tailor SOPs to Human Behavior and Site Needs
Accurately measuring results requires commitment to consistently following an operation’s standard operating procedures (SOPs). That in turn means SOPs must be developed to fit the system, says Francisco Domingues, global head of nutrition and health for swine.
“You must understand the individuals you’re working with, you must create solid SOPs and, when training, you must deliver all of the information in a clear way so employees can really do the job.”
SOPs might not work equally across all sites within a system, Domingues says.
“Sometimes you have a general SOP that works for a very modern system, but you forget to adjust it to fit older farms, and people on those farms have to work much harder to deliver the results,” he adds.
One gap across the pork industry today is data about pig care behavior that can be analyzed to see how people’s day-to-day work impacts results, Johnson says.
“We measure outcomes way better than we measure behaviors. Some of that is probably just because the outcomes at the end of the day are directly correlated with financial performance,” Johnson says. “Measuring the input data, the behavior, is hard, but we can get over the fact that it’s hard. The pig producers who solve it will be rewarded for sure.”
