Background

Yorkshire producers make history as work starts on health improvement scheme - April 19, 2009

Funding is now in place to build a healthier, more efficient and more internationally competitive Yorkshire and Humberside pig herd. The target is to give producers the tools to reduce production costs by up to £8 a pig.

“We can’t rely on the current favourable euro-sterling exchange rate for our future profitability,” said NPA and BPEX chairman Stewart Houston. “We have all got to work on our key performance indicators - pigs per sow per year, feed conversion and growth rate - and that is what improved health through the county will help deliver.”

There are two reasons why the English pig industry’s pig health improvement scheme is being rolled out in Yorkshire ahead of other regions.

Crucially, Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, shares producers’ vision of what can be achieved to improve pig health and welfare. And equally important, Yorkshire pig-keepers have, in the words of one producer, demonstrated they are “up for tackling something really big” to improve health status.

The Yorkshire and Humberside project will take several years to complete. It is intended there will be a lasting legacy of information sharing and co-operation which will bring production benefits for generations of pig-keepers to come.

Leading figures in the industry have acknowledged that had the project been in place several years ago it might have been possible to reduce the impact of wasting disease in Yorkshire significantly, by pinpointing how the disease was entering the county and how and where it was spreading.

The majority of producers who have been briefed on the project have been wholly supportive. Others will have a chance to hear about the plans first hand at NPA’s northern region meeting at The Crown at Boroughbridge on Thursday April 30.

Bringing down disease pressure over a whole county presents considerable challenges, say consultants David Thelwall and Sam Hoste who are leading the project for BPEX.

“We need all the input from producers and vets that we can get. Everyone has his or her own view about what can be achieved and how best to achieve it, and the steering group needs to gather all that information.”

Because of its size and scale there are two phases to the project - Planning (this year) and Action (next year onwards). NPA has given its support, as has the British Pig Association.

The planning phase will cost around £300,000, which will come from Yorkshire Forward, as part of the current Rural Development Programme, and BPEX.

It will include the mapping of all pig units in Yorkshire and Humberside and an attempt to determine their health status. Identifying mainstream pig operations may be relatively straightforward. Locating and communicating with smaller scale pig-keepers poses a greater challenge but will be critical to the scheme’s success.

“If we are going to have a successful disease mitigation programme we are going to need to know where the pigs are, what chronic diseases they have got, the economic impact of reducing that disease and the best way to achieve it,” said David Thelwall.

Professor Stan Done, of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency at Thirsk, and veterinarian Nigel Woolfenden, of the Bishopton Veterinary Group, will be working on ways to quantify a herd’s disease status. This is a formidable task.

“As producers start paying more attention to reducing endemic disease they will as a matter of course improve biosecurity throughout the region,” said Stewart Houston. “I will be using this to demonstrate how favourably the pig industry’s biosecurity compares with the biosecurity of other sectors.

“I will be vigourously pressing the case that those who sign up to the scheme should get the added benefit of a discount on their cost and responsibility levy.

Although Thelwall and Hoste will be addressing meetings in the region to explain the scheme in detail and to gather people‘s ideas and advice, producers can contribute at any point by offering their thoughts to steering group members, who include Richard Lister (chairman), Stewart Houston, David Neal, Phil Stephenson, Chris Barlow and Glenn Dams.

Although reducing disease pressure across a region is complicated - the pig vets are very clear about that - the concept of the scheme itself is simple.

“We accept that it will be impossible to persuade one hundred percent of pig owners to take part but our target will be create a growing area of minimal disease pressure which in turn will reduce the chances of reinfection after, say, a destock,” said David Thelwall.

Over the next few months the steering group will have several key issues to tackle - for instance how to accommodate the time-lag in breeding stock availability, and whether it will be possible for the scheme to have its own off-site finisher accommodation.

Many producers are keen to see some action as soon as possible and may wish the planning phase, which is from now to December, could be shorter, but mapping the Yorkshire pig herd and allocating a health status to each herd is going to be a time-consuming and complex task.

But it is, as the steering group has pointed out, a job worth carrying out in its own right. Even if the project went no further it will be immensely useful for the industry to know where all the pigs are and what disease challenge they present.

Another task will be to draw up a protocol for participating producers to sign up to. Only after talking to producers and the allied trades will it be possible to determine what the protocol should include and how demanding it should be.

The steering group is clear that it wants the scheme’s progress to be as transparent as possible. “We know what we are attempting to do is a really big deal,” said David Thelwall. “There are considerable hurdles to overcome but with the industry’s support we will overcome them.”

One of the aims of the project will be to leave a lasting legacy for the next generation of Yorkshire pig farmers.

“We want this regional grouping to continue after the funding ends,” said Sam Hoste.
“Having a local structure for sharing information - identifying what disease problems people have got and how they are going to deal with them - is going to leave us in a much better place than we are in now.”