Educational Programs: Alternative Swine Housing Educational Programs

Swine production facilities in the United States have adopted technological advancements in response to problems and opportunities as they arise. The first pressure was due mostly to economics. To improve feed efficiency, animals were moved into climate controlled buildings. To reduce labor costs, manure was handled as a liquid through slatted floors and feed and water systems were automated. Larger buildings were used to gain economy of scale and to increase the overall income to the producer as the profit margin per pig marketed decreased. All of these innovations helped swine producers to more economically produce commodity pork. Disciplines Animal Sciences | Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Comments This proceeding is from Certification and Education Programs: Current Status of Farm Animal Welfare, ed. Richard Reynnells (Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, September 21, 2005): 50–56. This conference proceeding is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_conf/116 Educational Programs Alternative Swine Housing Educational Programs Jay D. Harmon, Ph.D., P.E. Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department Iowa State University Mark S. Honeyman, Ph.D. Mark Boggess, Ph.D. Animal Science Department Director of Animal Science Iowa State University National Pork Board Ames, IA 50011 P.O. Box 9114 Des Moines, IA 50306 Introduction Swine production facilities in the United States have adopted technological advancements in response to problems and opportunities as they arise. The first pressure was due mostly to economics. To improve feed efficiency, animals were moved into climate controlled buildings. To reduce labor costs, manure was handled as a liquid through slatted floors and feed and water systems were automated. Larger buildings were used to gain economy of scale and to increase the overall income to the producer as the profit margin per pig marketed decreased. All of these innovations helped swine producers to more economically produce commodity pork. In recent years, environmental pressures have played a role in influencing the design of housing systems available to swine producers. Environmental legislation precipitated changes in manure handling, manure storage and building site selection. Animal welfare and niche markets are now influencing housing selection and production practices. Niche markets are established to provide pork with attributes that some consumers view as adding quality. These fall into two main categories (Honeyman, 2005), quality attributes and credence attributes. Quality attributes claimed by many niche markets include certain genetics, taste or flavor, high quality, freshness and tenderness. These are generally not directly influenced by housing type. Credence attributes are aimed at perceived health concerns or social values of given consumers. These attributes may include antibiotic-free, growth promotant-free, no use of animal by-products in the feed, family farm raised, natural, organic, produced outdoors or with bedding, locally raised, humane rearing, known origin, or environmentally-friendly. Most of these traits are hard to quantify in the pork products but add perceived value in some markets. (Honeyman, 2005). At first most swine producers were interested in alternative housing systems to reduce the capital investment required for swine production. Swine producers were finding that finishing buildings that held less than 400 to 600 head lacked the economy of scale and put them at an economic disadvantage over larger producers. Generally these smaller producers were willing to trade