Monitoring units fixed to sow stalls on this Italian unit show automatically when oestrus starts so pig artificial insemination can be timed correctly.

Automatic equipment to detect on-heat sows has become relatively common as an option in loose housing, but it is still a rarity where the weaned sow is held in a single-place stall. Some Italian friends involved in pig production have set out to change that by inventing, and now patenting, a system to use in stall accommodation.

Marco Lunati and Luigi Gesi are from the same village in the Lodi district of northern Italy. Marco runs a 600-sow unit and Luigi works with computers and software. When Marco was having problems achieving an acceptable farrowing index for his pig herd, he brought in Luigi's knowledge of computing to assist the search for a solution.

Together they have produced an electronic form of heat detector that is installed on Marco's pig farm and has been launched commercially under the brand name of Spy Pig. As this name suggests, it is essentially a system of observation. It watches for tell-tale changes in the sow's behavior and movement that signal the start of her oestrus.

To develop the supporting automation, Luigi Gesi recorded the movements of 1000 sows using cameras mounted on the sow stalls and built the results into a software program for analyzing the relationship between behavioral changes and heat onset. Checking this afterward against human observations showed that it was 95% accurate. The next step was to devise a monitoring unit which could be fixed on the stall, over the sow's back.

Sensor units fitted to the top of these stalls monitor the movement and behavior of the sows as a guide to heat onset.

The monitor produced by the Italian partners incorporates a motion sensor that works by sending out an infra-red beam. Return readings are converted by the software on the farm's computer into a schematic with a cartoon-style representation of all the sows and indicators according to their breeding status. This then gives the herd manager the information for scheduling the pig artificial inseminations correctly.

In addition, the monitoring unit itself has a row of lights in different colors. The red light in the series illuminates when the sow is judged to have started oestrus. After her next behavioral change confirms that she has been inseminated, this is shown by the green light on the panel. Other lights refer to the sow's state of well-being.

"We wanted a method that would give indications to the person in the sow house as well as on the PC," says Marco. "For us, the big advantage of the system is that it provides constant surveillance for 24 hours daily instead of the usual routine in herds of checking heat manually 2-3 times per day. It can be used instead of having manual checks or to complement them. Another important point is that it is non-invasive. In our herd we have monitoring units in 120 of the sow places at a cost of about €150 each, including the supporting Windows software. The payback comes from the extra fecundity achieved by inseminating sows at the right time and from avoiding the cost of empty days."

Americans grow their niche markets
White-linen restaurants in the USA are the driving force behind a rising demand for pork from some novel added-value projects.

Outdoor pig production on the Iowa farm of Paul Willis, manager of Niman Ranch Pork Company in the USA.

In a country where 100 million pigs are marketed for meat every year and only about 20 big players dominate the business, the battle to win a premium price or even survival by standing out from the crowd has taken on a new urgency. The pig producers making the most obvious moves currently are those who aim to serve a niche market by supplying a specific product in reliable deliveries.

Recent steady growth of niche markets for pork has been a feature of the US pigmeat industry. Over the last 10 years their retail volumes are reported to have grown by at least 20%, even if their share of all pork sales remains extremely small.

With their development has come a need to define terms more precisely. One definition offered by the National Pork Board suggests that niche marketing means "Supplying unique pork and pork products in a way that specific customer segments prefer or value." In more practical terms, today's niche markets in the USA are associated mainly with so-called natural or organic products. Among their characteristics they are likely to say the meat has been produced without the use of antibiotics (or hormones) in the pig feeds, without feeding animal by-products, with access to pasture or outdoor yards and bedding materials, with humane and friendly treatment and with special care for the environment.

Last year the pork board co-ordinated a Niche Pork Study to evaluate the importance of such attributes among customers. The survey (by R. Parker & Associates Inc/Ashcroft Research with funding from NPB and the Kellogg Foundation) indicated that consumers were willing to pay a premium for niche pork and that 40% of them were more likely to buy meat from locally grown animals. It went on to judge that pigmeat from pasture-raised animals in a pig production system excluding both antibiotic growth promotants and animal by-products could obtain up to a 25% share of the total national fresh-pork market.

At about the same time an edition of US magazine Food Technology was claiming one of the Top Ten global food trends to involve "Foods that are closer to the farm referred to by such terms as farmstead or homestead, organic and natural, sustainable grown, free range and produced with respect for land, animals and workers continue to capture food markets worldwide." Of course, this then requires a definition of the term organic. On the US scene, organic can be taken broadly as referring to meat from certified natural production. Certification is available from the US Department of Agriculture, although that is not mandatory. Others including the American Berkshire Association add their own special regulations for qualifying schemes. Auditing and verification by independent agencies apply to a wide range of brands and labels.

A distinct chain from producer to consumer exists for niche pork as for commodity pork in the United States. This will involve primary producers, marketing groups, processors, wholesaler and retail outlets, restaurants, Farmers' Markets and online shopping. The essential difference regarding the niche-market meat is that it will figure almost exclusively in fresh-meat channels and relies at least as heavily on the caterers and direct sales as on the retailers.

Consumption outside the home is big business in the USA. It can be divided most simply into 3 main categories, starting with the fast-food outlets of which McDonalds, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken are the most obvious examples (although do not ignore the rapid rise of the ethnic-style restaurants, particularly those with a Mexican flavor). Each of these is still predominantly a user of commodity meat products. Recent times, however, have seen them becoming much more concerned about the level of animal welfare practiced by their product sources. They have set up welfare advisory committees, codes of practice and audits that now exert a strong influence on production systems.

The second category of outside consumption is being called Fast Casual. Definitely growing and evolving, its examples include the Chipotle chain of restaurants (see panel). One of the major points linking the category's various members is that they source meat from natural/organic producers.

See the rest of this article: Pig Markets