Stakeholders
Organic pig breeding and pig fattening farmers, organic and conventional advisors and veterinarians in all participating countries. All participating institutions will expand their networks across disciplines, being involved in animal welfare, nutrition and environmental impact. Also the transdiciplinary approach connects advisory structures and researchers.
The knowledge gained and the tools developed will benefit similarly farmers, advisors and veterinarians in other countries. The outcomes can benefit (national) stakeholders such as organic associations, agricultural chambers and ministries across Europe. Also the scientific community is targeted by aiming to publish the results in scientific journals.
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Short announcements
The third ProPIG Workshop and Training of Observers will be held in Fossano, Italy from 21.-24.May 2013. The aim of the first day is to repeat animal based assessment with all on farm observers on two Italian pig farms in order to monitor inter-observer reliability. Furthermore all partners will discuss the progress so far, first results and further analysis regarding the comparison of systems as well as planning the final farm visits, which will be carried out from June 2013 onwards.
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Strategies to reduce environmental impact by improving health and welfare of organic pigs
|  | New printed farm handbook for organic pig producers
"Improving health and welfare of pigs" is a new practical handbook for organic pig producers. The handbook summarizes the expertise of farmers, consultants, scientists and technical literature for maintaining the health of pigs.
(Frick, 24.8.2015) The new handbook was developed in the framework of the international project «ProPIG». It combines the expertise of 74 pig producers, together with input from advisors and scientists from eight European countries. The recommendations provide support to farmers and consultants in the development of an optimal pig husbandry. Through the use of simple checklists, the manual identifies possible causes and behavioural disorders for the major problem areas and suggests measures for their correction.
In the CoreOrganic II project ProPig, scientists and advisors evaluated health, wellbeing and husbandry conditions of pigs on the above mentioned 74 organic farms in eight European countries with differing housing systems, including free range, partly free range and indoor housing (with outdoor access).. Based on these assessments, improvement strategies were developed together with the pig farmers and compiled in this handbook.
English, French, German,
Italian
and Czech.
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Background
Robust and competitive organic pig production needs to encompass low environmental impacts and good animal health and welfare. In theory, improving animal health and welfare reduces environmental impacts through decreased medicine use, improved growth rates and feed conversion efficiency. However, as data on environmental impacts are scarce, the extent of such improvement has never been verified on working farms.
In organic pig production, health and welfare improvements must be implemented through preventive approaches, optimal disease management and innovative systems regarding outdoor areas.
This poses a challenge to the farms. Together, organic regulations, different national welfare regulations and different building traditions have promoted the development of a variety of housing systems, outdoor rearing and management strategies across the EU. The relative environmental impacts of these have not been quantified. This diversity offers real potential to aid improvement, if the ‘best’ can act as role models for others, which might be more effective than adapting practice derived from experimental systems.
This project includes data recording on organic pig farms, calculations of nutrient balances and Life Cycle Assessment for several contrasting scenarios and the development and evaluation of farm specific improvement strategies.
Project activities
At the beginning of the project husbandry systems were defined, (e.g. outdoor / partly outdoor / indoor with concrete outside run). After development of on-farm assessment protocols a cross-sectional survey and a prospective cohort study were carried out on about 25 farms of each system across eight different European countries. Environmental impacts were assessed using both Life Cycle Assessment and calculations of nutrient balances at farm and outdoor area level. Animal health and welfare were evaluated from outcome measures of clinical scoring and selected behavioural parameters. Results were fed back to farmers as benchmarking reports, based on which the farmer decided farm specific goals and strategies to achieve these. As an outcome all farms created their individual health, welfare and environmental plan, which were reviewed after one year to allow continuous development.
The relationship between health, welfare and environmental impacts were examined using factor analysis and multiple correspondence analyses. Thereby, farms were grouped based on common housing and management characteristics, and groups be compared regarding outcome parameters. Furthermore, the effect of farming system on health, welfare and environmental impact were assessed with multivariate models, taking into account the climatic conditions. The farm specific strategies were evaluated by assessing within-farm improvement in measured criteria over 12 months.
Dissemination activities includes the development of a decision support tool for improvement of environmental impact and a summary of successful improvement strategies (codes of practice). These are presented as a booklet and training material for organic pig farmers and advisors, which have been introduced during national courses.
The project has taken a holistic approach and combine several key objectives: management of outdoor areas, disease prevention, optimizing nutrition and innovative interacting strategies for improvement to support extension services.
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Main outcomes
A handbook for farmers is now available to all organic farmers in Europe with versions in four languages: English, French, German and Czech.
It has the potential to be an effective tool for organic pig producers across Europe to take into the pig barn.
Three husbandry systems were defined, which are
compared regarding the situation of animal health
and welfare and environmental impact.
a) Outdoor Pigs live permanently outdoors in paddocks
with shelter for sleeping but unrestricted
access to the soil (shelter could be a temporary
hut or permanent building). The paddock is integrated
in crop rotation and not just a sacrifice
area for permanent pig use.
b) Indoor - pigs live in buildings with access to
an outdoor concrete run or a small sacrifice soil
area for permanent pig use - not integrated into
crop rotation.
c) Partly outdoor - pigs spend part of the production
cycle in each system type (at least one
production stage is fully housed while the rest is
outdoor. A production stage could be dry sows,
lactating sows, e.g. group suckling, weaned piglets
or finishing pigs. The combination of indoor
and outdoor production might occur within the
same farm or in linked farms if piglets are produced
on one farm but finished on another, or
within a seasonal housing of animals outdoors
(“Swedish system”).
Farm visits
From June 2012 until December 2013 farm visits
were carried out in Austria (16 farms), Germany (16),
Denmark (11) Switzerland (9), Czech Republic (1),
France (4), Italy (9) and UK (9).
- During the first visit the farmer was interviewed,
a representative number of animals assessed,
medicine and productivity records collected and
feed samples taken.
- During the second visit, farm individual results
were discussed with the farmer and specific
goals and measures for each farm were agreed.
The project partners’ role in this task was to act
as facilitators. Additionally soil samples were
taken on selected farms.
- The third visit included a complete assessment
of all farms using PigSurfer, as wel as immediate
feedback, which included detailed information
and benchmarking across all 75 pig farms as well
as a within-farm comparison with the first visit.
“PigSurfer”
The Automated Recording and Feedback Software Tool (“PigSurfer”=
PIG SUrveillance, Reporting and Feedback) consists of the Software
“PigSurfer” and is available as Android or Desktop version. It can
easily be taken directly into the pig barn. Data can be uploaded into
the existing data bank of 75 organic pig farms, benchmarked against
these and printed.
All important aspects are included: animal welfare (e.g. scan sampling
of oral behaviour), health (e.g. MMA treatments), nutrition (e.g.
thin sows, feed ration), environmental impact (e.g. manure management).
This enables a discussion with all involved and to agree on
areas and measures to improve.
Feeding strategies
Farmers were asked to describe their feeding practices and for all
farms, the nutrient content of feeds used was recorded, either from
the manufacturer’s claim or calculated from ingredients. Four farms
used a single diet for all pigs, 46 % fed the same diet for all sows,
58 % for fatteners, 73 % for weaners. Results suggest using specific
feeding for different types of pigs according to their needs may improve
feeding efficiency and reduce the environmental impact.
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) across the three housing
systems (preliminary results)
Greenhouse gas emissions (CO2-eq.) as well as acidification eutrophication
potential, N and P balances were calculated for each farm.
fatteners feeds used efficiency had most impact on greenhouse gas
emissions, but the three husbandry systems did not differ regarding
this aspect.
Two Decision support tools:
- All improvement measures implemented by farmers are collected
as a “Catalogue of improvement strategies” which is the basis for a
“Booklet” for farmers as a simple support to take into the pig barn.
- A Decision support tool for environmental impact” was developed
based on the data regarding environmental impact as well
as expert opinion and literature, which provides an excel sheet as
a guiding through several areas, which can influence the environmental
impact on an individual farm. As a summary, areas
to improve and positive factors can be shown to the farmer as
green and red bars.
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Search Organic Eprints
The open archive includes a vast amount of documents on organic certification
Search the open archive
More search options on www.orgprints.org
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ProPIG Coordinator
Dr. med. vet. CertWEL Senior Scientist Christine Leeb, University of Natural Ressources and Applied Life Sciences, Austria.
Contact: christine.leeb@boku.ac.at
Involved Partners
Czech: IAS Institute of Animal Science; Gudrun Illmann and affiliated partner: BIO-I: Dipl.-Ing- (Agr.)/ Organic adviser Jiri Urban
Denmark: DJF-AU Department of Animal Health and Bioscience, Aarhus University Denmark; Senior scientist Tine Rousing
France: INRA Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique; Senior scientist Dr. Armelle Prunier
Germany: FLI Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut; Dr. Sabine Dippel
Italy: SUI Agricultural research council- Research unit for swine husbandry; MVD PhD Davide Bochicchio
Switzerland: FiBL Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland; Dipl. Ing. (FH) Barbara Früh
United Kingdom: NU Newcastle University; Lecturer in Livestock Production Systems Gillian Butler
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