When porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) struck U.S. pig herds in 2013, the Iowa State University (ISU) Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL) – which carries the nation’s largest swine caseload – scrambled to design a high-capacity test to keep up with the outbreak. Then they had to play a little catch-up to manage the large caseload, which taught the researchers many lessons.

It’s part of the reason VDL researchers have developed a diagnostic test for swine to detect Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), a mosquito-borne disease common in southeast Asia that hasn’t been seen in the US.

JEV became a higher priority after it spread to Australia in 2022, prompting the Swine Health Information Center – a pork checkoff-funded industry organization charged with monitoring swine diseases – to fund development of a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for JEV, the same genetically based screening method considered the gold standard for diagnosing COVID-19.

Having a federally approved JEV test ready would help mitigate the damage of a possible outbreak, which could cause a drop in U.S. pork production of 1-2% and lead to economic losses of up to $612 million, according to an estimate commissioned by the Swine Health Information Center.

While most cases of JEV in pigs lead to minor symptoms, it can cause neurological and reproductive issues. JEV also poses risks for other animals, including humans. Severe symptoms in infected humans are rare, but in the 1 in 250 cases where they develop, the fatality rate is as high as 30%, according to the World Health Organization. The test developed at Iowa State, which can detect all five genotypes of JEV, could be used for humans, said Rahul Nelli, head of the research project.

Because individual pigs produce less methane than cattle, emissions from swine haven’t received as much attention in the scientific literature, according to Elvira Sattorova, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University. But the cumulative impact of pig production is a matter of concern for countries with larger pig populations, including Denmark, Sattorova said. And scientists still know very little about the levers and controls that could minimize methane emissions from swine.

The first study by Sattorova’s research team, which is slated for publication in the October edition of Animal Feed Science and Technology, points to the potential impact of diet. In the study, growing pigs and sows fed diets with large quantities of beet pulp produced more enteric methane than those fed conventional diets or diets with higher quantities of wheat bran. Beet pulp contains more soluble fiber, while wheat bran contains more insoluble fiber, Sattorova explained. Soluble fiber is thought to be easier for most animals to ferment, which in swine appears to result in greater emissions of methane.

The initial study focused on enteric emissions — emissions from the digestive tract — and didn’t consider possible tradeoffs with the potential for emissions from manure. Though future work by Sattorova’s team will consider manure and other factors contributing to emissions from pig production, she said they wanted to focus on fiber in the first study on account of the growing interest in using byproducts that contain different types and quantities of fiber in pig diets.

The use of byproducts is generally considered a means of making animal agriculture more sustainable. But without better data on enteric emissions from pigs, it’s difficult to say with certainty whether the change in diet results in a net benefit to the planet, Sattorova said.

China will examine 3 large European pork processors in the context of the recently announced investigation into alleged “dumping practices of pig products” on the Chinese market. Danish Crown (Denmark), Vion Food Group (the Netherlands) and Litera Meat (Spain) were all ‘selected’ for a detailed investigation, Beijing’s trade department said.

In June, China announced that the country would be investigating what it feels to be unfair trade practices by EU pork exporters, following complaints from the China Animal Husbandry Association (CAHA). It is generally assumed that China has taken the step in retaliation to an EU decision to put a levy on imported Chinese electric cars, despite denials by the Chinese authorities.

All 3 companies have announced that they will fully cooperate and hand over all information requested by the Chinese authorities. They or their national organisations strongly deny the allegations.

Spain is by far the largest exporter of pork and pork products to China. According to figures by Interporc, Spain’s national organisation for the pig sector, in 2023 the Spanish pork industry producers exported 560,448 tonnes with a total value of €1.2 billion. About 20% of all Spanish pork exports went to China. When seen from a Chinese perspective, about 21% of all Chinese pork imports come from Spain. There is no indication from the National Association of Meat Industries of Spain (ANICE) that they are concerned about the Chinese action.

“We enter this phase with full peace of mind, just like the European Commission does. At the same time, we have to open, and keep open, the necessary communication lines between the authorities in China and Spain as well as the EU. If necessary, we will take the initiative to organise that”, said Giuseppe Aloisio, general director of ANICE.

News agency Reuters said that the probe is expected to be completed in June 2025, but could be extended by another 6 months.

According to Council Directive 98/58/EC (1998) animals must be fed a diet that is appropriate to fulfil their physiological needs. However, pregnant sows are generally fed at a restricted level to avoid a high body condition score and the risk of farrowing problems.

With a review, EURCAW-Pigs aims to support inspectors of EU member states in understanding the science and regulations related to pig welfare concerning hunger induced aggression and stereotypies. Underlying mechanisms and causes of these behaviours in sows related to hunger are described. Furthermore, measures to reduce welfare risks related to aggression and stereotypies are discussed followed by suggestions how to measure these behaviours.

Restricted feeding of sows results in behavioural and physiological signs of hunger, including increased competition for access to feed (aggression) and an increase in stereotypic oral behaviours. Competition over feed may be reinforced by several management and housing conditions that are described in the review. Hunger leads to frustration, that may develop into stereotypies.

Inspectors can measure aggression directly, by observing behaviour, and indirectly, by assessing the resulting skin lesions. Stereotypic behaviours can be observed based on so called ‘ethograms’ which describe the different types of stereotypies.

There are several ways to reduce the welfare issues resulting from feed restriction. They divide into possibilities to reduce the underlying problem of hunger and those to mitigate the resulting aggression and stereotypies. To reduce the root cause of the problem, sows need to feel more satiated during gestation which can be achieved by e.g. a higher content of fibre in the diet. Possibilities to mitigate aggression and stereotypies relate to aspects of housing such as space, flooring, substrates, feeding system, and complexity of the environment.

The Russian government and logistics firm FESCO have launched a ‘Meat Shuttle’. This is a railway service for the delivery of perishable products in refrigerated containers from Russia to China and countries of Southeast Asia. The new route will boost the export potential of the Russian pig industry in the Asian direction.

The service will utilise FESCO-operated intermodal and shipping routes via the ports of Vladivostok and St. Petersburg as well as via land border crossing points. The Meat Shuttle will give Russian meat companies an opportunity to send their products to China and the countries of Southeast Asia as part of a single end-to-end transportation without changing the refrigerated container along the entire route, according to the Russian export centre, a government agency authorised to facilitate export.

The new transport route will also save delivery time due to the absence of overload at intermediate points. Meat Shuttle clients will be eligible for reimbursement of up to 25% of transportation costs under the Russian state support programme for the transportation of agricultural products, the Export Center unveiled.

“I believe that given the opening of the Chinese pork market, the Meat Shuttle will be in great demand among Russian exporters of meat products and will allow them to occupy a serious niche in the target market” said Veronika Nikishina, general director of the Export Center.

As the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports, according to preliminary results, commercial slaughterhouses produced 6.8 million tons of meat in 2023. That was 4.0% or 280,200 tons less than in the previous year. This means that domestic meat production has fallen for the seventh year in a row since its peak in 2016 (8.25 million tonnes). After comparatively slight declines from 2017, meat production fell by 8.1% in 2022 compared to the previous year, and now meat production fell again significantly in 2023. A total of 47.9 million pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and horses as well as 702.2 million chickens, turkeys and ducks were slaughtered in slaughterhouses in 2023.

With 43.8 million animals slaughtered in 2023, the number of pigs slaughtered fell by 7.0% or 3.3 million compared to the previous year. The number of pigs of domestic origin slaughtered fell by 7.7% to almost 42.3 million animals. The number of imported pigs slaughtered in German slaughterhouses, however, rose by 19.5% to 1.5 million animals. In total, slaughterhouses produced around 4.2 million tons of pork in 2023. That was 6.8% or 306,500 tons less than in 2022. Compared to the record year of 2016, around 1.4 million tonnes less pork were produced in 2023, which corresponds to a decline of over a quarter (-25.1%).

Infectious diseases are among the factors that most limit the efficiency of livestock production, since its appearance entails losses associated with increased mortality, a decrease in the feed transformation index, increased veterinary costs and the loss of value of infected carcasses. 

A good example of this can be found in the pork sector, which currently provides the most widely consumed red meat worldwide, and in the health and economic risk that the Aujeszky’s disease, one of the most important swine virus diseases. In Spain, Aujeszky’s disease has been eradicated in domestic pigs, but it is present in wild boar, which carries a significant risk of reinfection of the domestic swine herd. The direct economic losses associated with an outbreak of Aujeszky’s disease for a pig farm free of the disease could be between €350 and €800 per adult female per year.

A new epidemiological model, developed by researchers from the University of Lleida and the Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC), has revealed the effects of combining management practices and vaccination on the control of Aujeszky’s disease in a standard pig production system under different epidemiological scenarios. It is a computational model of population dynamics (known as the “PDP model” for its acronym in English: Population Dynamics P systems), a novel tool that is especially suitable for studying complex dynamic problems efficiently, since it allows to simultaneously consider a large number of interactions between different processes.

The model results indicate that, once a diagnosis of infection is confirmed on a farm, early vaccination of the majority of the population (we are talking about more than 75%) is critical to reduce the spread of the virus and minimize its impact on pig productivity. For their part, management practices seem to have an insignificant effect on virus control, which could be associated with its great ease of spread.

A team of Chinese researchers supported by a US-based researcher investigated whether weaner pigs are provided with polysaccharides from a Japanese seaweed known as “kombu” or Laminaria japonica. The team published about their findings in the Journal of Veterinary Sciences in a research article published in December 2023. They investigated the effects of adding L. japonica polysaccharides to the diet on growth performance, faecal digestive enzyme activity, serum biochemical indices, and free amino acids in weaned piglets. The team looked into these kombu polysaccharides as they are comprised of a combination of different sugar residues. Those compounds exhibit a variety of beneficial biological functions.

The research team selected 120 healthy barrows for this study, which lasted 21 days. They assigned all piglets randomly assigned to 4 treatments according to the initial body weight. The team supplemented each concentration of L. japonica polysaccharides (0, 100, 200, or 400 mg/kg) to the basal diet. The research team computed average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI) and gain-to-feed ratio (G:F). At the end of the experiment, a single piglet from each pen, with a body weight closely aligned with the pen’s average, was selected, and the team obtained blood as well as faecal samples.

The results showed that polysaccharide supplementation at dosages of 200 and 400 mg/kg showed a significant enhancement in the ADG and ADFI of weaners during days 0-21.  Better growth performance was due to the improved digestive enzyme activities in the faeces and increased appetite and energy absorption of piglets. Polysaccharide supplementation at dosages of 200 and 400 mg/kg significantly increased the faecal amylase activity of piglets, due to the polysaccharide’s prebiotic activity, which promotes starch digestion and absorption. In addition, the polysaccharides linearly increased faecal amylase and lipase activities.

Regarding amino acid content in serum in the 400 mg/kg group increased levels of histidine and asparagine were observed in piglets due to increased protein digestion and absorption. In addition, polysaccharide supplementation at a dosage of 200 mg/kg reduced serum methionine and phenylalanine contents compared to piglets supplied the polysaccharides at a dosage of 100 mg/kg. At all levels (100, 200 and 400 mg/kg), polysaccharide supplementation did not impact the serum levels of e.g. glucose, total cholesterol and ammonia of weaned piglets. That is probably due to the short experimental period.

The authors concluded that supplementation of 200 and 400 mg/kg of L. japonica polysaccharides to the feed could increase growth performance and the amylase activity in the faeces of weaned piglets. They expect this to improve the nutrient metabolism ability of weaned piglets.

The porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is one of the most dangerous pathogens for the swine sector. In addition to affecting the reproductive system in breeding sows and the respiratory tract in young animals, it is usually associated with other secondary diseases, which is why it has become the health problem that generates the most economic losses in the swine industry worldwide.

In their research on PRRSV, researchers from the University of Córdoba (UCO) in Spain investigated the role of so-called ‘transcription factors’, which are molecules responsible for the differentiation of cells of the immune system, and concludes that three of these molecules are expressed with greater intensity in the most virulent strains of the pathogen.

The UCO research team led by Librado Carrasco has managed to identify the role of three key molecules in the immune defense against this pathogen in three target organs of the pig: the lung, thymus and tracheobronchial lymph node. Precisely, three fundamental organs in triggering the immune response and in which the virus replicates the most once it comes into contact with the body.

To do this, the research work has analyzed these organs from 70 pigs in three different groups, one of them not infected by this pathogen, which functions as a control group, and two other groups infected with two strains of different virulence of the virus. Specifically, the study has focused on what is known as ‘transcription factors.’ Again, these molecules regulate the differentiation of cells involved in the immune system. In this sense, as highlighted by researcher Inés Ruedas-Torres, one of the main authors of the study, the results indicate that three of these molecules (called T-BET, FOXP3 and EOMES) are expressed with greater intensity and earlier in the strain analyzed with the highest virulence.

“Immune defense is not based on a single response but on a sum of several elements,” said Irene Rodríguez-Gómez, another of the researchers who participated in the work. Along these lines, as reflected in the study, each of these three proteins that research has revealed as fundamental in the immune response plays a different role in the body’s defense. While the first of the three molecules analyzed (T-BET) is related to the activation of macrophages that phagocytize the virus, the second (FOXP3) prevents, among other functions, the inflammatory response of the infected organism from being too intense. For its part, the third molecule (EOMES) is responsible for the activation of lymphocytes responsible for inducing the death of cells infected by the virus.

Currently, there are several types of commercial vaccines against PRRSV, but none of them, the researcher emphasizes, prevents secondary infections or offers complete protection due to the high mutation of the virus. The long-term objective, therefore, is to develop new vaccine candidates that offer total immunity against the different strains of the pathogen.

Rabobank’s Global Pork Quarterly Q1 2024 report said early indications are that pork production will slow as key regions face contraction in the sow herd. According to Chenjun Pan, senior analyst of Animal Protein at Rabobank, forecasts point to a potential decrease in global pork trade during the first part of 2024 as high inventories in importing countries reduce demand. “We’re looking at a soft market for pork exports, especially with the ongoing crisis in the Red Sea and Suez Canal complicating European shipments to Asia,” Pan said. A trend in the report was the expected decline or flat production in China, the United States, and some European countries during 2024, with disease pressure adding to overall industry challenges.

Although production headwinds could be ahead, feed prices continue to come down, with corn and soybean prices falling 15% to 25% year over year. “Lower feed costs are a welcome relief for pig farmers, improving margins in a time of uncertainty, Pan said. However, Rabobank still cautions that weather-related volatility could impact supply and price movements.

Brazil’s pork production continues to be on the rise as some regions continue to look at declining herds. The group pointed to uneven growth worldwide with African swine fever (ASF) outbreaks and loss-making pressure, especially with breed herd reduction in Asia, particularly China. “We expect disease outbreaks to create ongoing uncertainty in 2024,” Pan said. “Meanwhile, productivity will continue to improve in 2024, driven by genetic gains, better farm management and cost reduction strategies.”

Even with all the market difficulties, pork consumption remains resilient to inflationary conditions around the world. Rabobank expects a mild improvement in global pork consumption during the year. “Pork continues to be a staple protein, holding its ground against more expensive meat like beef,” Pan said.