Brian Sullivan the CEO of the Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement said the adoption of new technology will be key for Canada’s pork industry to remain competitive while meeting new challenges facing the industry.

In partnership with Swine Innovation Porc, the Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement is examining novel technologies designed to optimize pig performance and improve competitiveness. Sullivan said historically the biggest challenge for the Canadian pork industry is to remain competitive.

“We needed to have very efficient sows, efficient growing hogs with good yielding carcasses and that’s going to continue,” he said. “We need technologies to make sure we keep at the leading edge in everything we can do as far as efficiency is concerned. We’re also being faced with many new challenges, some of those in the animal welfare health areas, some of them in pork quality for example. Some of these are going to be challenging and some of them are opportunities.”

Sullivan said there’s no question that Canada has always been a leader in development and adoption of technologies and it’s one of the reasons Canada is among the leaders in pork production globally and to maintain and develop that further, the Canadian industry has to stay ahead of the curve on technology.

“This is going to be critical not just to survive but to take advantage of the opportunities and to meet the challenges that are facing the industry,” he said. “By no means is Canada alone at looking at technologies and doing the research that is needed.”

Sullivan said there’s very tough competition from Canada’s neighbours to the south and Europe in particular as well as other countries.

“If we rest on our laurels, it’s pretty sure somebody is going to come in and take the share of the market,” he said.

Sullivan said there are several technologies that are getting closer to practical application. Some of them are vision based systems where there are cameras taking pictures in two or maybe three dimensions and those could be used to automatically predict something about the pig, the weight, the growth of the pig for example or some carcass characteristics or confirmation.

“There’s others that could monitor the activity of pigs so accelerometers or things like we have in our iPhone to keep track of our own activity,” he said. “Those things could work with livestock and get information on behaviour that might be helpful. There are other technologies that could monitor the health of the animals, help with reproductive management, help to enhance the quality of the pork ultimately that’s going to be produced for consumers.”

Sullivan said like with all technologies the costs generally start out very high at the research level and early adoption level but these prices are coming down faster and faster. Technological development, the pace of that is picking up.

“The other thing that’s happening is operations are getting larger so, if you have a technology that can be used on more and more animals, then the cost per unit of output of pork or piglet starts to come down very rapidly,” he said. “The other side of it is that we’re able to do more and more with the information that technologies can gather so there’s more value that could be potentially coming out of the technology.” •

— By Harry Siemens