Page 6 - Australian Pork Newsapaper

APL’s 2020-25 Strategic Plan
APL’s current Strategic Plan expires in mid-2020 and we have now em- barked on the process to develop our next Strate- gic Plan.
This process is also im- portant as it will inform our R&D investment over the life of the plan – with our 2019 R&D review recommending a change towards more strategical- ly focussed projects that would deliver stepwise impact to the Australian pork industry.
When we drafted the current strategic plan, we asked you about your risk appetite.
Producers clearly indi- cated a preference for a period of continued sta- bility and there was little appetite for risk.
With the R&D and Mar- keting reviews undertaken in 2019, APL was of the view that this time, we needed to think differ- ently on how to deliver a Strategic Plan going for- ward that will position our industry for the disruption particularly at a global scale that is now apparent.
APL has engaged Gary Saliba from Strategic Journeys to help us with this process.
Gary has worked with a number of RDCs and other organisations to de- liver strategic plans.
To assist us deliver the consultation material, we have established a ‘lead- ers’ group’ and an ‘inno- vators’ group’.
These will be working
Point of View
with Gary and APL ex- ecutive team to craft three different Australian pork industry futures to gener- ate discussion about how you want your industry to look in 5-10 years.
The discussions will lead to insights that will be the basis for the strate- gic plan as well as the new R&D investment model.
Initial insights from the consultation process will be tabled at the November delegates forum.
The consultation meet- ings will take place from mid-October to early- December – with two producer and one exter- nal stakeholder meeting in each state (with one combined meeting in Tas- mania).
There will also be some in-depth and targeted one-on-one consultations.
We’ll be providing some information on the dates and locations for these meetings in due course, along with some options for you to provide input if
you are unable to make a meeting.
Keep an eye on our Weekly Communique for more detail in due course.
At the conclusion of our consultation process, the APL Board will consider the outcomes, and during January 2020, the APL team will start crafting the new Strategic Plan.
The Board will consider the first draft at its Febru- ary meeting.
APL will then undertake a final consultation pro- cess with producers, supply chain, other key stakehold- ers and governments.
The final APL Board endorsed document is re- quired to be tabled with the Australian Govern- ment by the end of April 2020.
This is an exciting time and quite a different pro- cess.
If you have any ques- tions about the process, please do not hesitate to contact one of the APL Executive Team.
AUSTRALIAN PORK LIMITED
ADVANCE NOTICE OF 2019 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
The Annual General Meeting of Australian Pork Limited (ABN 83 092 783 278) (APL) will be held on Thursday 14 November 2019 commencing at 12.30pm (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time) at the Melbourne Marriott Hotel, Corner Exhibition and Lonsdale Streets, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000.
The business of the Annual General Meeting will include:
•

•
•
•

Annual Return Date extended
The Annual Return Date has been extended two weeks, meaning that Members

Membership and Delegate Elections

be a member every three years.
eligible to vote in the Delegate Elections.

available from

information required by the return date, they are not eligible to continue to be a

Page 6 – Australian Pork Newspaper, September 2019
www.porknews.com.au
by DEB KERR General Manager Policy
Genetic resistance can contribute to disease control
THIS month’s case study comes from Regina Fog- arty, a vet with Rivalea based in Bendigo.
It looks at a successful genetic approach to reduc- ing E coli disease in pigs.
Breeding disease resistant animals to improve health and productivity has long been considered a goal of animal production.
Substantial effort has gone into researching what controls immune competence and allow- ing animals to increase resistance to particular diseases.
One great example over the last 30 years has been the elimination of what we called the Hal gene – which was associated with ma- lignant hyperthermia, the death of pigs under stress- ful circumstances includ- ing during trucking and meat quality issues with Pale Soft Exudative pork.
Australian pig produc- tion and the welfare of our pigs have benefitted greatly from this industry- wide initiative.
Resistance in the case of bacterial diseases would mean no need for medi- cation treatment and no antibiotic required.
While we hear of break- throughs such as the de- velopment of PRRS re- sistant pigs through gene editing last year, the step from the laboratory trial to disease resistant herds is a complex, time con- suming and in many cases impossible achievement.
Enterotoxigenic E coli
disease has long been a major cause of scouring in suckers and weaned pigs in Australia.
A significant amount of antibiotics has been used to treat and control this disease.
While there have been some very good vaccines developed, outbreaks are generally treated with antibiotics.
Neonatal and postwean- ing colibacillosis are caused by very different strains of E coli.
The key differences be- tween strains being the toxin types they produce and the finger like pro- jections on the outer cell wall (fimbria) that allow attachment of the bacteria to the gut cells.
This attachment is the first step in the develop- ment of toxin release and disease.
K88 is a common fim- bria type in those E coli that cause neonatal scours and is also often found in those causing post-wean- ing diarrhoea.
It has been known for some years that there are naturally occurring pigs with a genetic resistance to F88 attachment.
They lack the recep- tor on their gut cells that would have enabled adhe- sion of the pathogen.
Commencing in 2012, the genetics team at Rivalea Australia began working on breeding pigs resistant to the K88 fimbria.
The first step was a re- view of the level of re-
sistance (requires resist- ant genes on both chro- mosomes for the pig to be resistant), carrier (one resistant gene) and sus- ceptible (neither chromo- some has a resistant gene).
Secondly, through ge- netic records, it was dem- onstrated that the gene was heritable, and hence disease resistance to K88 could be passed on from one generation to the next.
The aim was to ensure the frequency of the fa- vourable K88 gene in the nucleus breeding herd and therefore the commercial herd was increased to ac- ceptable levels.
This project involved ongoing testing all breed- ing stock (gilts/sows and boars) across all most Ri- valea sites for the K88 genotypes.
By doing DNA analysis on hair samples from in- dividual breeding animals and actively selecting breeding stock a reduction in the incidence of the dis- ease has been experienced at Rivalea.
The K88 resistance trait was of course not the only trait being selected for, but the change has been impressive.
Over the past six years a 95 percent reduction in E coli deaths has been recorded.
Now all semen used at Rivalea and sold commer- cially comes from Rivalea boars fully resistant to the K88 fimbria (carrying two copies of the gene).
Ross Cutler