The invention is simple but significantly improves animal care and worker safety in pork barns during blood sampling.

White is the herd veterinarian for herds at Maple Leaf Agri-Farms in Landmark, Man. and regularly collects blood samples.

“The most common method is for a barn worker to use a snout snare to restrain the gilt or sow in a temporary stall for the procedure and pull the pig forward while the team member leans into the stall,” she said. “Pulling the pig forward with a snare stresses both the pig and the team member. And if the snare comes loose, the pig can suddenly impact the team member and cause injury.”

White worked with veterinary assistant Ronald Nayre and farm maintenance technician Jim Kehler to design a spacer that is now used across Maple Leaf production barns.

“We created a light, aluminum device that could be inserted into the stall during the process and moved to the next stall when the process is complete,” White said.

How the device was created followed a pattern that is typical of Aherne Prize winners, said award committee chair Ben Willing, an associate professor at the University of Alberta.

“Someone has an idea, often teammates get involved and the product ends up finding use across that operation and others in the industry,” he said. “Those grassroots efforts typically draw widespread interest because they make a real difference in daily production work.”

The award is named after Frank Aherne, who was a professor at the University of Alberta and a major force for science-based progress in the Canadian pork industry. It was presented at the recent Banff Pork Seminar. More details on the device can be found at banffpork.ca.

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It’s a threat that must be thwarted, Scott Dee, veterinarian and director of applied research for Minnesota-based Pipestone Veterinary Services, told attendees at the virtual 2021 Banff Pork Seminar in January.

“We’ve got to work together,” said Dee. “This is not just Canada, this is not just the U.S., this is all three countries in North America. Our collective goal has to be to keep African swine fever virus out of this continent.”

Animal feed had previously been overlooked as a risk factor until the virus causing porcine epidemic diarrhea began infecting U.S. swine herds in May 2013. But it has since been demonstrated that some feed ingredients, particularly soy-based products, can support the viability of viruses, including the one that causes African swine fever (ASF). This discovery had added significance in 2018, when African swine fever decimated the Chinese pig herd, the world’s largest.

It’s estimated that the number of breeding sows plummeted to 15 million, from 50 million previously (and now stands around 30 million), said Dee. (Parent company Pipestone System provides management services for hog farms and manages a 70,000-sow system in China.)

“The Chinese are very, very concerned about feed contamination. There’s plenty of good information in China that the ASF virus entered farms through contaminated feed.”

And some of that could have conceivably made its way here. Although the U.S. exports tens of millions of tonnes of soybeans annually, it also imports soy-based feed for specialty markets (such as organic feed) or feed additives. In 2018, it imported 104,000 tonnes, with just over half coming from China.

“It’s crazy when you think about it,” said Dee. “Putting our agricultural industry at risk over 104,000 tonnes.”

There’s a financial advantage in importing large volumes of certain feed additives from China, so instead of stopping that practice, he said Pipestone set up a system for amino acids and vitamins that has built-in biosecurity protocols that are audited right from the manufacturing plant in China to warehouses and shipping all along the chain into the U.S.

Other buyers have switched to suppliers in different countries, but that doesn’t eliminate the risk.

Imports from China fell nearly 90 per cent in 2019, with Ukraine replacing China as the top supplier and Russia greatly increasing exports of soy-based feed ingredients to the U.S. But both countries have cases of African swine fever, Dee said.

Contaminated feed and feed ingredients are now widely recognized as likely vehicles for the transport and transmission of viral pathogens. In Canada, restrictions are placed on feed ingredients from ASF-positive countries and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has established secondary control zones around all national seaports where these high-risk ingredients are received. After arrival, products must be stored under controlled environmental conditions for a specified interval to allow adequate time for viral decay prior to distribution to milling facilities.

Expanding knowledge on the half-lives of viruses found in essential animal feed ingredients has led to science-based protocols in the U.S., which allow these materials to be safely introduced from high-risk countries, Dee said.

This approach is referred to as “responsible imports” and relies on a comprehensive risk assessment process that considers factors such as the need for the imports and whether there are alternative suppliers. It also includes several mitigation methods, including the relatively new concept of “feed quarantine.”

“Clearly there is a growing body of scientific evidence that certain feed ingredients can support the transport and transmission of multiple viral pathogens,” said Dee. “It’s a long list (of ingredients). And there are options now to mitigate this risk.”

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In his presentation, Volker Gerdts pointed to the mRNA technology used to develop the first two COVID-19 vaccines in record time.

“The new RNA vaccines are just a perfect example of how the field is evolving at the moment in the face of the pandemic,” said the director and CEO of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

“And the other thing that we’re learning with this pandemic, of course, is that vaccine development that used to take years — for humans, 10 to 12 years and for animals, five to eight years — will in the future, be developed in a much shorter time,” he said.

VIDO has 45 years of history in the vaccine world and today is a leader in Canada and globally. The organization has produced 10 vaccines in that time, six of those world firsts.

Although its major focus is on animal health, the organization — which has 150 scientists and staff — now works on human and animal pathogens in its Level 3 agriculture containment facility. It was the first in Canada to isolate the COVID-19 virus and supply it to the international network of scientists frantically working on a vaccine. It has also developed a vaccine candidate that is about to go into a first-stage human clinical trial.

And it is also building a manufacturing facility capable of producing millions of doses of various animal and human vaccines per year.

“Our facility here at VIDO-InterVac, in the future, will be able to make both human and animal vaccines, up to 20 million to 40 million doses per year,” said Gerdts. “Construction will be completed in 2021 with the first production run starting in 2022.”

In his virtual presentation, he also explained that while viruses can spread in many ways, they need to get inside cells in order to replicate. They have mechanisms to do that so they can take over cells and use them to reproduce copies of themselves. VIDO’s vaccine strategy is to try and block this.

There are two main vaccine mechanisms to accomplish this, said Gerdts. One is antibodies which block a virus’s ability to latch on to the cell. The other is T-cells, which are cells that kill other cells.

There are several different types of vaccine technology and each has pros and cons:

• Live attenuated vaccines provoke strong immune response but have safety concerns as animals can still shed the virus.
• Inactivated (killed) vaccines are very safe but require additional adjuvants to work effectively.
• Recombinant (subunit) vaccines are also very safe but don’t provoke a strong immune response and need adjuvants.
• Vectored vaccines have the advantages of both live and inactivated vaccines but immunity against a vector can be a problem.
• DNA and RNA vaccine are a novel technology that have been shown to be very effective in experimental animals but use in humans and animals not yet fully explored.

When it comes to creating a vaccine, scientists always have the same wish list, said Gerdts. They want a vaccine that works fast, provides immunity for a long time, needs only one dose, is highly effective, works for everyone, is safe and has no side-effects, and is easy to store, transport and administer.

The goal for every vaccine is to mimic first exposure to the pathogen. That produces a much stronger reaction from the immune system, which is the purpose of booster immunizations.

Vaccines remain the most effective means of controlling infectious diseases, said Gerdts, but perhaps the biggest opportunity, in his view, is what is driving new thinking at VIDO.

“The question really is, why wait for the disease to break out and then try to catch up with it?” he asked.

“Traditionally that would take 10 to 15 years and under accelerated conditions like we see now, it still takes one to two years and still accounts for billions or trillions of dollars in losses.”

But with advances in bioinformatics (computer technology to analyze biological data) and artificial intelligence, it’s possible to search for and determine the structure of pathogens present in nature that could jump to humans and animals.

“So we can model it in the lab what would happen in the real world and have a vaccine even before a disease breaks out,” said Gerdts. “These could be stored at the World Health Organization or OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) and when a disease breaks out, a plane would take off, deliver the vaccine, and even if it is not 100 per cent to start with, it would help a lot to contain the disease.”

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Two presentations at the 2020 Banff Pork Seminar highlighted the threat posed by wild boars.

Ryan Brook, a University of Saskatchewan associate professor and wildlife researcher, told seminar attendees that wild pigs are an ecological disaster, the problem is exploding and time is quickly running out on the ability to eradicate the problem.

In addition, an international expert on African swine fever spoke of the key role that wild boars have played in this devastating epidemic.

Unrecognized problem

“More than 700 delegates came here to talk about managing pigs inside the fence,” Brook said in his address. “I’m the only one who came here to talk pigs outside the fence.”

The problem started in the ’80s when animals escaped from wild boar farms or were released into the wild as the economics of that industry faltered. Since then, they have bred with domestic pigs, resulting in larger animals (some weighing several hundred pounds) and larger litters.

In the wild, these animals travel in groups called ‘sounders’ run by a matriarch female with lone males travelling extensively in search of females.

Wild pigs are incredibly smart and elusive, and populations here are growing because they’re so successful in finding food, said Brook. There are many myths about wild pig control, he added, with one of the biggest being that populations can be controlled by sport hunting.

“We will not barbecue out this problem,” he said. “If anything, sport hunting increases the problem. Wild pigs scatter and more groups are formed as a result.”

Brook’s wild pig research efforts are funded in large part by the United States Department of Agriculture with support slowly growing from Canadian partners. But the problem is largely ignored here, he said.

“A year ago I thought African swine fever would have driven a whole new level of renewed interest in the wild pig problem,” said Brook.

But interest and support for control methods and research have not really increased, he said.

Role in African swine fever

African swine fever has made headlines around the world and controlling it will be extremely challenging — in part because of wild boar populations, said Klaus Depner, a virology expert from Germany’s Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute and a leading authority on the disease.

He detailed the history of African swine fever, which until a dozen years ago was considered a so-called exotic disease with minor impact. That changed when an epidemic started in Georgia in 2007, subsequently spread throughout the Caucasus and the Russian Federation, and then into the European Union in 2014. Four years later the first outbreaks were reported in Asia and it has since devastated China’s sow herd.

The strain in the current epidemic is highly virulent and can result in 90 per cent (or more) of an infected herd dying. However, it is not as highly contagious as first

thought and analyses of domestic pig outbreaks have found its contagiosity (degree of contagiousness) is rather low.

This complicates early disease detection because at the beginning of an outbreak usually only a few pigs are affected and die.

This is one factor in what Depner calls “the persistency triangle” — low contagiosity prevents fast and complete depletion of the host population, high case fatality makes the virus largely available in the form of carcasses, and high tenacity (the ability of the virus to survive over a long period) ensures its long-term persistence in the environment.

This has resulted in the disease becoming endemic in the wild boar populations of several European countries.

When African swine fever first reached the EU, it was expected to either spread rapidly within the wild boar population or fade out due to high case fatality rate and the resulting absence of long-term carriers. But none of these predictions held true. The infection survived locally in the wild boar population independently from outbreaks in domestic pigs.

It is now believed the virus persists for a long time in decaying carcasses of wild boars that succumb to the disease and may facilitate virus persistence for months within a region, significantly influencing the course of an epidemic. Even if the probability of infection for each contact is low, the long-lasting persistence will allow maintenance of virus circulation, Depner said.

Control program

Brook offered a checklist of what is needed to make progress on wild pig control.

One is leadership.

“There’s a real vacuum here and no one is saying, ‘Let’s go kill these pigs,’” he said. “It’s a big deal and nobody is getting on board.”

More research and monitoring is needed as well as disease testing.

He urged producers to be on the lookout for wild pigs on their land.

“Do some test cameras as a cheap and easy way to get started,” he said.

And if wild pigs are found, producers should not allow sport hunting as this will only scatter members of a sounder and exacerbate the problem. Instead, whole sounders need to be captured with all but one killed — that animal should have a tracking collar put on it and then be released so it can lead trackers to other sounders.

“It’s very effective,” said Brook, adding a comprehensive multi-pronged strategy is needed for effective control.

When asked what such a program would cost, he said it would be “bloody expensive.”

“Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars,” he said. “One thing is sure. Every year you wait it gets more expensive.”

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The Hammock Swine Restraint Device was developed by Tess Faulkner and Gillian Greaves of South West Ontario Veterinary Services. It restrains the pig to allow both the operator and the animal to relax. Instead of using a sorting board or their body to restrain the animal, a worker is able to place the piglet into the restraint, keeping both hands free to safely operate euthanasia devices such as a captive bolt gun, ensuring accurate placement.

The FarrPro Haven microclimate for pigs was developed by Amos Petersen and Chris Hansen of FarrPro Inc. in Iowa City, Iowa. It is a heat and light supplementation platform for use in farrowing crates. It promotes healthy creep behaviour while significantly reducing pre-wean mortality (a recent Iowa State University study found a 20 per cent reduction) and lowering energy use.

For a more in-depth description of both innovations, go to meristem.com and click on the 2020 Banff Pork Seminar link.

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But the middle is where it gets interesting — with “flexitarians” looking for good sources of protein and willing to have a mix of plant and animal proteins, David Hughes said at the recent Banff Pork Seminar.

There are numerous examples in the U.K. of products catering to this group, with items such as pork or beef sausages and patties mixed with haricot or red kidney beans, said Hughes, emeritus professor of food marketing at Imperial College London.

Flexitarians — often women aged 25 to 35 with relatively high incomes — are making choices for health reasons, perceived benefits for the environment, and animal welfare.

“Not only will we see more vegan and vegetarian options, but products like pizzas, lasagnas, and pies will replace a proportion of the meat with plants,” said Hughes.

Faux meat is also a growing trend, thanks to products such as Quorn, which mimics chicken, he said. The British company which invented the product was recently purchased by a large Philippine company to serve the Asian market.

“In my mind Quorn will be the first billion-dollar global brand of fake meat,” said Hughes, noting Quorn has more space in the meat case section of U.K. grocery stores than any meat protein.

“There is a tsunami of veg protein on English shelves — and other countries, like Iceland, are following suit.”

There’s growing world demand for protein but also a “retreat from meat” with dairy, plant, and alternate protein sources such as algae and insects gaining traction, he said.

Animal activists aren’t the only ones driving this shift, but also mainstream media such as The Economist are focusing on alternatives to meat proteins, said Hughes, adding there is increasing social pressure on consumers, who are being asked about where their food comes from and how it was made.

“I want to eat food that’s good for me and my family and that I feel good about eating,” Hughes said of today’s consumers.

And they want all of that right now.

“Striking to me is the extent that global trends are driven and converging through social media,” he said. “I am seeing young people in China with similar views to their counterparts in the U.S.

“While kids used to come home and say, ‘What’s for dinner?’ — young people may be saying, ‘What is dinner?’”

All of the growth in food manufacturing in North America is coming from smaller companies, with big companies generally seeing declining sales, said Hughes.

“I have never seen a better opportunity for small-scale companies to do well, and what’s more, to seek financing from big food companies. They are interested in these products.”

There are significant opportunities for the pork sector in all of this but it must move fast, he added.

“The meat industry must substantially up its marketing game or it will hemorrhage quickly.”

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Tom Stein, senior strategic adviser for Quebec-based Maximus Systems, gave nine examples of “smart barn” technologies already in use or on the way at the recent Banff Pork Seminar.

“One must remember, these nine technologies are the beginning, not the end,” said Stein.

Several monitor the activity and behaviour of pigs in real time, including one that looks for changes in eating and drinking patterns; another that detects estrus in sows; and a third — called the Pig Cough Monitor — that employs microphones and an algorithm to detect respiratory problems in pigs up to two weeks before producers or vets relying on their observations could.

Similar technology is used to listen for piglet sounds and squeals to prevent crushing deaths in the first four days after farrowing. When it identifies the unique sound of a piglet being crushed, it sends a vibration to a patch attached to the sow, causing it to immediately stand up.

Stein also outlined technology that improves work practices and reducing work.

One of the former is called AgVoice, a voice-enabled data entry that allows agriculture professionals to capture insights while on the move. Another system using Bluetooth improves biosecurity by warning workers if they aren’t following proper procedures. And a system called FeedTrackur uses GPS location data and a cloud-based database to let feed truck drivers know if they are delivering feed to the right location as well as providing traceability for feed deliveries.

There are two monitoring systems that use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled smart dosing devices to provide automatic medication delivery, data recording, and weight-based and fixed-amount dosing. Both systems record treatments, manage medication inventory, and integrate with scales, RIFD readers, and livestock management software.

Finally, Stein also outlined technology that uses 3D imaging to estimate the weight of pigs. With a margin of error below four per cent, it can be used to give an average daily weight gain for a pen of finishing pigs. For the full article, go to www.meristem.com (click on Special Reports and then on ‘Smart technologies here or emerging in pork production’ in the 2019 Banff Pork Seminar section).

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The prize, named in honour of the late Frank Aherne, a professor of swine nutrition at the University of Alberta, is awarded for innovative solutions to production challenges. Sunterra Farms production manager Scott Hyshka was named co-winner at the Banff Pork Seminar last month for developing an isolation crate for loose housing system.

The device is used at Mountain Vista Farm, a 4,000-sow operation near Drumheller that uses competitive feeding shoulder stalls in its open housing pens. However, this feeding system can cause problems because aggressive sows can result in others not getting enough feed.

The collapsible crate can be opened to house an animal that requires segregation for additional nutrition or as a refuge. When not needed, it can be folded up against the pen wall. A sow can rejoin the group when fit.

The other co-winner of the Aherne prize was Ontario’s Birnam Pork for a “ghost gate” that can be placed behind animals while breeding them.

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Today animal welfare is a profile issue in the public eye, animal activists are putting pressure on producers and the people involved in cattle transportation have an entirely different level of responsibility for themselves and their industry.

The veteran trucker from Picture Butte has clear ideas on how to load, and how to lead. As a cattle-handling trainer, he teaches proper loading techniques, and as an industry advocate, he has been a significant player in developing today’s industry standards.

In the process he has developed strong feelings on how the industry needs to lead. With transportation such a prominent part of the public’s exposure to the cattle industry these days, here’s his checklist of the key things needed to accomplish that:

Cattle behaviour is key

The most important step in loading a trailer is understanding cattle behaviour.

“For example, know the animal flight zones,” said Sincennes. “Stand at the edge of the chute and lean over, and you’ll push cattle back. Follow cattle up the chute and walk alongside, and you may think you’re chasing them. But you’re actually holding everything behind you back.”

Cattle will not enter a trailer easily if there is a layer of liquid on the floor. To them it’s a lake. They simply don’t know how deep it is and won’t enter it.

Cattle type is critical

Knowing the type of cattle — beef, dairy, cull animals — and the weight of the animals are the first steps to ease of loading. Knowing the size and height of compartments in a trailer is critical. Animals should be able to stand in a natural position without making contact with the roof.

A key issue for the beef industry is transporting cull cows.

“They will not be as strong and will need room and proper bedding to lie down,” said Sincennes. “If you have loaded at too high a density and animals go down it is very difficult to manage.”

Loading dairy and cull cattle at the same density as stronger cattle is a mistake. Dairy cattle are usually taller than beef cattle and need special consideration for where they go in a trailer. Sometimes a different trailer is needed.

“There’s a huge difference between a 25-foot compartment and one that is two feet shorter,” said Sincennes.

Shippers need to lead

So many times truckers load in challenging situations where they are not able to get a good read on the cattle being loaded, said Sincennes.

“We are completely at the mercy of the shipper in those cases,” he said. “We need to be able to trust that the shipper has a good knowledge of what we and cattle face.”

The cattle industry has made significant improvements over the past 20 years, and the industry has made a real commitment to ongoing improvement.

Those continual improvements are needed, said Sincennes. Two in particular he would like to see. One is more cleanout locations for trailers. Another is easier-to-read density charts for quick reference by truckers in real-world situations, especially for newer drivers.

There have been many improvements in cattle transportation in recent years, but there are still those who shirk responsibility, said Sincennes. The biggest issue is an attitude that when an animal moves on to the next stage of transport that the potential problems move with it.

However, anyone involved with the load can be held responsible, he said.

“The reality is that people involved in transporting cattle need to understand they can be charged for poor handling of animals. The world is watching how we do these things.”

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Porcine health management represents a tremendous opportunity for the application of innovative genomic tools, University of Alberta professor and genomics expert Michael Dyck said at the 2016 Banff Pork Seminar.

Disease constantly evolves and presents new pressures, said Dyck. There is a need to develop genomic tools and production management practices to help protect animals exposed to multiple disease threats including the most significant disease currently affecting the pork industry.

At the same time there is pressure on antimicrobial use in pork production which may require more robust pigs to maintain production, he says.

The next phase of research will take a more broad approach and concentrate on disease resilience, which is a combination of tolerance and resistance, he said. Pigs with increased disease resilience are better able to respond to health challenges and maintain reproductive and grow-finish performance.

A major four-year study, led by U of A scientists, is currently underway and will build on previous research accomplishments in the area, said Dyck.

The research is focused on four areas:

• Host variation in disease susceptibility to identify individuals with improved resilience.
• Host-pathogen interactions to identify and augment host responses linked to resilience.
• The role of microbial colonization in shaping immune responses and resilience.
• Nutritional impacts on these interactions.

The study will also include societal and economic studies to determine the attitudes of various industry players and factors that could affect the rate of adoption of health- and productivity-related technologies.

The outcomes could include genomics-based tools for optimal disease resilience and management of nutritional strategies. These could improve end-users’ ability to selected, feed and microbial management tools for optimal immune response of pigs, he said.

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