Swine Welfare Research Provides Public Assurance of Ethical Pork Production Standards

The NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Swine Welfare suggests the pork sector needs to be prepared to assure the public that production practices are meeting the ethical standards expected of today's pork value chain.

Research conducted through the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Swine Welfare Research Program will be the focus of a forum scheduled for Tuesday, Day One of the 2024 Banff Pork Seminar.

Dr. Yolande Seddon, an Associate Professor Swine Welfare and Behavior with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Swine Welfare, says questions are being asked of the pork value chain about how meat is being produced.

Quote-Dr. Yolande Seddon-Western College of Veterinary Medicine:

The NSERC Industrial Research Chair was one of those strategic moves and the goal was to have a program that would be specific into some critical areas of swine welfare research.It would enhance the research capacity of the Canadian swine industry and put in place an increased critical mass of highly trained personnel to be responding to the industry's needs so, supporting the industry to be looking proactively about how do we drive this conversation forward for swine welfare as opposed to reactively where we are doing research to answer questions when we know there is a code of practice change coming up or a legislation change.

The NSERC Industrial Research Chair program is specifically looking at, if you're rearing pigs in a fully slatted system, how do we optimize the pathway to support the pig to have high welfare in a fully slated system and then secondly how do we measure and monitor animal welfare better so that we can address questions over chronic states of animal welfare and how do we have a monitoring system so that we can communicate how animal welfare is in the pork industry to support transparency and also feedback to producers to support continual improvement.

For additional information on the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Swine Welfare Research Program or to register for the Banff Pork Seminar forum search swinewelfare.com or swinewelfare.ca.