APN July 2017
P. 1

Vol 21. No. 7 July 2017 Australian Pork Newspaper PO Box 387 Cleveland 4163
Phone: 07 4697 3344 • Fax 07 4697 3532
www.stockyardindustries.com
Phone (07) 3286 1833 Fax (07) 3821 2637 Email ben@porknews.com.au
Good strategy and making pigs fly again
Pork CRC supported Animal Science Honours student Danica Evans received First Class Honours for her work and topped her year. She is now doing the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine course, also at Murdoch University. Danica knows this means plenty of ‘dog days’ ahead with the likes of blue heeler Boodja.
Pork CRC students making a mark
guidelines review for pigs is very much a part of this strategy.
International trade
Asia is developing very quickly and with that, a taste for more meat in the diet.
Pork is the meat of choice in many parts of Asia and higher incomes are leading to higher quality demands for the pork on their plates.
Part of the task of finding consumers for the increased volumes of pork we are pro- ducing is to find new mar- kets in Asia looking for our high-quality product.
China is very much a part of this picture and is a focus area for developing protocols we can leverage for future trade.
These five key focus ar- eas are not contradictory to our original Strategic Plan 2015-2020, but the review has given us the opportunity to re-emphasise what is im- portant right now.
A strong base platform of increased demand, higher competitiveness and risk mitigation is the right thing for the industry – in good times and bad.
For our Queensland and northern NSW readers, a pig producer meeting is being organised in Kingaroy on Saturday, July 22 to discuss issues particularly around the present pig prices.
More information will be forthcoming with the rel- evant details through the normal APL communication channels.
54 King Street, Clifton QLD 4361
07 4697 3344
www.stockyardindustries.com
CRC for High Integrity Aus- tralian Pork supported Ani- mal Science Honours student Danica Evans, who recently received First Class Honours for her work and topped her year, is now doing the Doc- tor of Veterinary Medicine course, also at Murdoch Uni- versity.
Her Pork CRC Honours the- sis was titled ‘Comparison of acetylated high amylose maize starch and zinc oxide for ame- lioration of post-weaning diar- rhoea in weaned pigs’.
Danica’s supervisor Prof John Pluske and Pork CRC CEO Dr Roger Campbell agreed her re- sults confirmed the efficacy of zinc oxide for ameliorating di- arrhoea in newly weaned pigs, but the mechanism was yet to be definitively established.
After reviewing Danica’s fi- nal report, Dr Campbell de- clared the positive effects of the maize starch product, a form of resistant starch, on feed ef- ficiency in the third week and overall were interesting and implicated a possible role for lower ileal/hindgut activity in performance.
“This is possibly linked to the gut bacteria/fermentation of
favourable products from the resistant starch,” Dr Campbell said.
He added that the potential implications for grower/finisher pigs was exciting, but the issue, as always, would be cost, given the product was geared to the human market.
Congratulating Danica, Dr Campbell said coming first in her Honours year was a fantas- tic achievement.
“We are proud of our Pork CRC supported students as they contribute to the pork indus-
try while studying, often with significant findings from their under and postgraduate stud- ies,” Dr Campbell said.
“Many then, of course, go on and take up professional posi- tions in industry where their good work continues.”
Ingunn Stensland, another former Pork CRC supported Murdoch University Honours student supervised by Prof Pluske, recently commenced employment as R&D officer with Western Australia’s Craig Mostyn Group, best known for its Linley Valley Pork.
Dr Campbell said the uptake of Pork CRC supported stu- dents by industry had been ex- ceptional and a clear indicator of the student and supervisor quality in Pork CRC’s educa- tion program.
Of 23 postgraduates and 12 Industry Placement Program people who started with Pork CRC, 14 postgraduates (includ- ing seven of nine yet to com- plete their higher degrees) and 11 IPPs are now employed.
The total is 23 as two post- grads are also IPPs.
www.porkcrc.com.au
NOW STOCKING
BIG WHEEL FEEDERS
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• Set and forget!
WHILE the biggest issue in our industry at the moment is clearly our low prices, we recognise that at least at a consumer level, our industry is doing very well.
We at Australian Pork Limited are very focused on doing whatever we can – in the short term – to improve the present price crisis.
But in doing so, we cannot understate the importance of the things we do every day of the week to make sure we have a strong platform to work from.
With a longer-term view, the APL Board started to review our strategic position back in February 2016.
The board reviews our strategy every year at this time, but this review was a bit different because the industry had already reached some of the key performance indicators in 2015 or 2016 that in our Strategic Plan were targeted for 2020.
For example, the Strategic Plan suggests that our target for domestic fresh pork con- sumption per capita by 2020 is 9.6kg per annum.
Presently, our domestic fresh pork consumption is about 10.5kg per capita, per annum, so this KPI has al- ready been exceeded.
In reviewing the strategy, the Board came up with five key issues that will need ad- dressing with strong empha- sis over the next few years.
They are listed below.
Demand creation
With the relatively high pig prices of 2015 and 2016, quite a lot of investment was stimulated in our industry, which has and will further result in higher volumes of pork being produced in this country.
Our aim has always been to keep demand one step ahead of supply, which helps to keep prices at a sustain- able level.
This is clearly going to be a major challenge in future be- cause despite the present pig prices, pig volumes continue
Point of View
by ANDREW SPENCER CEO
to increase at a rate faster than Australian population growth. So the area of demand cre- ation will remain front and centre and an area of very
high investment for APL.
Production cost
There are a number of rea- sons why Australia is not the cheapest pork producer in the world.
Our carcass sizes, inability to import world’s best genet- ics and our grain market sys- tems all mean we are starting from a tougher position than many of our competitors.
But there are things we can do and we need to get creative about cheaper ways of producing pigs, even look- ing at more disruptive tech- nologies for a quantum leap change.
Biosecurity and herd health
Biosecurity and keeping our pigs safe from emergen- cy diseases is always front and centre in what APL is trying to achieve.
This doesn’t change in our new strategy but is re-em- phasised to make sure every- one understands the priority of this task.
High-welfare pigs
At its very heart, the Aus- tralian pork industry is about looking after pigs well.
We need to continue to se- cure those tools and prac- tices that enable us to have very high levels of animal welfare on our farms.
Our present strategy of initiating a standards and
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