Strategies to improve market value of pig carcases

Genetic improvement of pig performance is a primary tool in enhancing profitability in pig enterprises. The first step of genetically improving livestock is the development of a breeding objective which combines all economically important traits that can be improved by selection. These traits are given economic values that are defined as the increase in profit with a single unit change in each trait while keeping all other traits constant. Breeding objectives should include all traits that affect profitability even if they cannot be directly measured. This can be achieved by using knowledge of genetic parameters for traits that that breeders wish to improve (breeding objective traits) and traits that have no economic importance but are genetically correlated with traits in the breeding objective (selection criteria). Some traits may be prohibitively difficult or expensive to measure such as feed conversion ratios while others like carcase attributes can only be measured on animals after slaughter.