Page 4 - Australian Pork Newspaper

Death toll hits 2.8 million in Vietnam
APL Membership:
Leveraging your pig levy
• If you’re an Australian Pig Producer and you’ve paid the Pig Slaughter Levy in the 2018-19 1 July 2019 you’re eligible to apply or renew your APL Producer Membership.
• As a member you gain access to a range of representative in the upcoming Delegate Elections
• Being a pig producer or having a PigPass account does not automatically make you a Producer Member.

its Members’ details and eligibility for membership every three years.
• Learn more about membership and download the forms at www.australianpork.com.au/members
How to become a member
1 Determine how much pig slaughter levy you paid from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019. Example: *Pig Slaughter Levy: Number of pigs slaughtered x Levy amount $3.25 = $ Levy paid.
2 Complete the the APL producer member application.
i. give a standing consent for APL to calculate levy paid via accessing PigPass records (NVDs), or
ii. provide a statutory declaration to APL stating that you are an Australian pig producer and the

3 Return the completed form to us by Monday 2 September by either: • scan and send it by email to members@australianpork.com.au
• fax it to 02 6285 2288, or
• post it to PO Box 4746 Kingston ACT 2604 Australia.
VIETNAM has culled nearly 10 percent of its pig herd to contain an African swine fever out- break that has started hitting large-scale indus- trial farms, the Vietnam- ese Government said in a statement on June 25.
Earlier outbreaks have appeared mostly at small household farms but have now started to occur at larger industrial opera- tions, including Phu Son Farm in Dong Nai prov- ince near Ho Chi Minh City.
“This is a very worry- ing sign as these farms have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pigs each and therefore the damages would be sig- nificant,” the government said.
ASF, which is deadly to pigs but harmless to hu- mans, was first detected in Vietnam in February this year and has spread to farms in 60 of the coun- try’s 63 provinces, accord- ing to the statement.
Deputy head of Viet- nam’s Department of Ani- mal Health Bach Duc Luu said: “Authorities have recently culled hundreds of pigs at Phu Son Farm, home to more than 18,000 pigs.”
A representative of the farm owned by Phu Son Livestock Joint Stock Co declined to comment.
Phu Son Farm, founded in 1976, is one of the old- est of its kind in Vietnam.
The farm supplies pork mostly to Dong Nai prov- ince and neighbouring Ho Chi Minh City.
Nationwide, Vietnam has culled more than 2.8 million pigs in the out- break, the government said in the statement, up from 2.5 million pigs a week prior.
In March, the United Nations Food and Agri- culture Organisation ad- vised Vietnam to declare the outbreak a national emergency but officials said recently they had no plans to do so.
Luu said heavy rain in southern Vietnam could help the virus spread fur- ther.
Head of epidemiology at the animal health depart- ment Nguyen Van Long said it was “only a mat- ter of time” before the disease spreads to all 63 provinces.
Pork makes up three- quarters of total meat con- sumption in Vietnam, a country of 95 million peo- ple where most of its 30 million farm-raised pigs are consumed domesti- cally.
The country’s pork in- dustry is valued at about 94 trillion dong ($A5.77 billion) and accounts for nearly 10 percent of Viet- nam’s agricultural sector.
ASF was first detected in Asia last August in China, the world’s largest pork producing country, where the disease is ex- pected to reduce the herd by up to 200 million pigs this year.
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Page 4 – Australian Pork Newspaper, July 2019
www.porknews.com.au
APL CEO Andrew Spencer, Australia’s CVO Dr Mark Schipp and Biosecurity Strategic Review Panel Chair Gardner Murray.
Renewable gas – a potential future addition to farm micro power grids
☛ from P2
biogas to help offset costs. It is acknowledged there are still cost, regulatory and policy constraints that hinder the ability to tap the full potential of these
technologies in Australia. However, it is refreshing to see these options are being presented as a po- tential solution to energy generation throughout
Australia.
Visit by Dr Mark Schipp, Australia’s CVO to Aus- tralian Pork Limited
APL’s Biosecurity Strategic Review Panel, chaired by Dr Gardner Murray, includes mem- bers from the Department of Agriculture, Animal Health Australia and pig veterinarians.
The Panel meets quar- terly to discuss and pro- vide constructive feed- back on Australia’s pre- paredness for exotic and endemic disease and iden- tify RD&E needs and key risks for the Australian pork industry.
Following an invitation from the panel, Australia’s Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Mark Schipp attended the Panel meeting on May 14, 2019 and discussed the role of the CVO, the Department’s biosecurity priorities and activities, World Organisation for Animal Health matters, antimicrobial resistance and African swine fever.
Some interesting results:
Dr Kate Plush from Sun- Pork Solutions recently completed an APL-fund- ed study aimed at reduc- ing litter weight variation.
It is well recognised that variation in litter birth weight can affect pork pro- duction from the time of birth through to slaughter.
However, there is little published information on the seasonality of varia- tion in piglet birth weight.
It has been shown that feeding dextrose to sows can reduce variation in litter weight but this has not been tested during summer.
This study aimed to test the effectiveness of dex- trose administration in a ‘wean to mate’ diet to sows at alleviating with- in litter weight variation during summer and de- termine whether variation in piglet birth weight is influenced by season.
Evidence for increased piglet birth weight vari- ation in sows bred dur- ing summer despite the reduced litter size was obtained.
This finding is concern- ing as it suggests seasonal infertility can also result in increased within-litter variation.
Interestingly, the inclu- sion of 5 percent dextrose in the ‘wean to mate’ sow diet increased litter size without affecting litter birth weight variation.
Feeding 5 percent dex- trose in a ‘wean to mate’ diet also resulted in less piglet removals and high- er growth rates overall in piglets born to sows mated in winter (lactated in summer).
While this may suggest the applied treatment im- proved piglet vigour, this remains to be confirmed.
So, what are the costs involved?
Dextrose is easy and safe to handle and its in- clusion in the diet is rela- tively cheap.
At about $1000 per tonne and 5 percent inclu- sion, the cost is $55 per tonne of feed milled.
With a wean to ser- vice interval of five days and feed consumption of 3.5kg per day, the applica- tion cost is less than $1 per sow.
Using the reported far- rowing rate of 82 percent and 13.7 piglets born alive, the benefits far out- weigh the costs if farrow- ing house management is adequate.
Per 100 sows bred, the number of piglets born alive improved from 931 to 1118 using dextrose during the wean to mate period ir- respective of season.
Though this may all seem rather promising, farms could find it dif- ficult to order and store if volumes required are low and/or there are limita- tions on silo space.
To exploit the advantages identified in this study, it was recommended daily feed allowance of sows be top-dressed with about 190g of dextrose until breeding.
This is easy to achieve in systems that wean in- to breeding stations but will be more complex in group-weaned farms.
For further information on items discussed in this article, please contact me on 0423 056 045 or heath er.channon@australian pork.com.au