Well, if you thought 2025 was going to be a boring year, then think again. At the time of writing, we’re less than three weeks into the new year and already things are coming at us thick and fast.
Welfare, as ever, is going to be a high priority and there are a few things brewing that could be a huge positive for the sector as a whole, or potentially challenge us further.
An enormous amount of effort has now been put into flexible farrowing to make sure we have a clearer path (perhaps not completely agreed yet) towards what should be a significant step up for sow welfare for the indoor pig sector.
Having been working with producers on a variety of flexible and free-farrowing systems for more than 10 years, I truly believe we are at the stage where everyone should be able to access the information and expertise in order to take the plunge.
Let’s hope the legislators have their sensible hats on and use the knowledge that we are willing to share from what has already been completed on the ground before they put final pen to paper.
Supply chain reviews
Talking of legislators, the new government has promised to have the supply chain review on the books by the spring, so we will have to see how this ultimately affects everyone – hopefully, positive results will be seen at all stages of the production chain.
There are continued challenges to us all coming from a wide array of groups with regards to environmental impact (including outdoor production), antibioticusage (with Targets Task Force 3 on its way) and interventions such as tail docking.
The latter has just had some publicity around whether the veterinary profession is illegally signing off producers to continue with tail docking as a completely routine procedure. This was clearly reviewed in the last version of the welfare codes, when it was made clear what needed to be in place, so this should quieten down, as long as everyone keeps their pragmatic hats on.
We will all continue to make efforts towards reducing the incidence of vice in our pigs but, as we know, this takes considerable time and effort to enact. Progress is being made, though, so do make sure it is a priority for discussion with your vet.
Disease challenges
Disease is also providing a large topic for discussion, with both endemic UK challenges and exotic infections hitting the headlines. The discovery of foot-and-mouth disease in Germany in January
was a shock and, hopefully, it will have stayed there by the time you read this.
We have borders that are locked down for imports of live animals and meat products, but the market in Europe will take a considerable shake-up, as the flow of meat changes with supply and demand.
We suffer terribly from illegally imported meat coming into the UK because of our higher consumer prices, something that could be exacerbated over the coming
weeks and increase the pressure on those imports.
I truly hope the government is mindful of boosting our border force protection, since this illegal route will almost certainly pose the greatest risk. And that’s on the back of the already higher and continued threat of African swine fever from central and eastern Europe, to add to the risks.
At home, we have background health challenges that are at some of their highest levels for the past 15 years, following some weird weather patterns that have not allowed either a prolonged dry period or freezing temperatures for quite some time (the past couple of weeks being the exception).
There has been a steady build-up of infections, hitting a lot of herds, with viral challenges being particularly high, along with dysentery being reported at increasing frequency through
the labs.
What does this tell us? Well, we need to take a good, hard look at ourselves and our processes, since it is often holes in our setups that allow the spread of these diseases within our borders.
And if the background diseases can spread, then notifiable diseases will certainly be able to move around, if they land on our shores.
Let’s hope we don’t get to the point where we have to test how that would occur, but perhaps it is a timely reminder to review all of the processes on our own farms and businesses so we’re not caught unawares.