The 4,000-lb. Sow and Sustainability

When it comes to sustainability, genetics play an important role.

“I like to tell the story about the 4,000-lb. sow,” says Chris Hostetler, National Pork Board director of animal science when he spoke on “AgriTalk” during World Pork Expo. “When I graduated from high school in 1986, a sow would produce about 1,200 lb. of pork a year.”

Modern-day sows, through genetic innovation and improvements, better biosecurity, updated ventilation and housing, increased herd health and efficient feeding programs, can produce 4,000 lb. of pork, with genetics being the primary driver of those changes, Hostetler adds.

“Our producers have no opportunity to take credit for those improvements, but when you think about it, every one of those is an improvement in sustainability,” he says. “Because it's doing more with less, improving efficiencies along the way.”

Hostetler admits he had no idea the number was that big.

“We don't tell that story nearly as good as we should, and we don't tell it nearly as loud or as often either,” he says.

In addition, Hostetler points out the number of pigs that sow is weaning has increased.

“You think about our market weights and the survivability, the livability of those pigs along the way, just do the math on that,” he says.

With improvements in biosecurity and environmental concerns, the pork industry has made a lot of progress in that space.

“AgriTalk’s” host Chip Flory asks if genetics or management make more of a difference.

Hostetler says it depends on who you talk to — a swine nutritionist, geneticist or the production guy in the barn will all say it’s nutrition, genetics and management, respectively.

“I do think that genetics make a big, big difference,” he says. “Now to quantify that, it's a little more difficult, but there are some innovations in genetics that have led us down that path.”

The original linear, unbiased prediction geneticists used beginning in the early '90s to begin selecting animals that would perform well under the new conditions of living inside and under more intensive type of rearing conditions was blood.

Hostetler says the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology offers new options for genetic improvement.

“It’s not just productivity traits for those animals,” he says. “Are there things that we can do from a welfare standpoint to make a gene edit that would be welfare related? Are there things that we could do from a gene editing standpoint that would be related to making a more robust, more healthy animal along the way? Health is one of the areas that we that have tackled first in the gene editing space. And if you keep the animal healthier, they don't die as often. They grow. They're more efficient.”

The question now is if it was 1,200 lb., and it's 4,000 lb. of pork produced per sow now, what could it be in 10 years?

“I'm not sure that we've hit that upper biological limit on our sows,” Hostetler says. “From a genetic standpoint or a nutrition standpoint, certainly from a health standpoint, we're continued to be plagued with endemic diseases like PRRS and PED. I don't know that we've hit that biological upper limit yet. I do know that some technologies are allowing us to get there.”