“Addressing Grand Challenges through Science” was the title of the workshop held recently at the 2009 World Pork Expo. Several people representing pork producers, academia, government and industries allied to the pork industry gathered to have input into the critical issues of the day. Prior to the workshop, a survey was mailed to all invited participants and the results of the survey were used to set the stage for the organization of the workshop. Like responses on the open-ended survey were clumped to provide seven different breakout groups, including: declining research support, environmental impacts and regulations, food safety and security, human capital, public activity and perception, sustaining profitable pork production, and swine health and welfare.
Each breakout group was challenged to come up with the primary issues in that category and then develop solutions those issues. At the conclusion of the workshop, the group was reunited and asked to rate each of the issues raised on a seven-point scale. The ratings were used to rank the issues.
It is probably not very surprising that the highest priority issue affecting the pork industry and one that is considered a grand challenge is the issue of H1N1 and other zoonotic diseases. This is definitely one issue where the biological sciences need to interact with the social sciences. In these issues, the relationship between human health, food safety, and pork production or even the perception of such a relationship has been shown to be devastating to the profitability of the industry. The group called for a pre-identified crisis plan among other steps toward a solution.
Another high priority issue was the public disconnect from agriculture which is somewhat related to the H1N1 issue. The group saw the “We Care” program as a big step in the right direction, and suggested that a lot more be done toward marketing this to consumers. Other high priority issues included recruiting young people into all levels of the pork industry, developing the ability to adapt to the rapid changes being experienced in the industry today, food safety, international access, sustainable approaches to PRRS mitigation, food security, animal welfare, domestic demand, sustainable environments, lack of coordination and collaboration in research, lack of sufficient funds for applied research to meet the needs of the industry, emerging diseases, pork quality, and development of alternative feed energies.
The medium priority issues included antimicrobial usage, production efficiencies, worker training, air quality mitigation strategies, declining student enrollment and interest in swine production, and diet/health issues.
While all the issues had real importance to the industry, the ones deemed of somewhat lower priority included worker rewards, food availability, stockmanship, the data from the National Air Emissions Study, meat consumption and vegetarianism, nutritional interactions with disease, production facilities, and the total maximum daily load for the environment.
The workshop results are being reviewed by the participants before being published, but will be very useful to all those in research program development and funding roles as they look at these key issues identified by these representatives of stakeholders in the industry.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Meisinger is the Executive Director of the U.S. Pork Center of Excellence. For more information, or to contact Dr. Meisinger, e-mail him at: drdave@iastate.edu or call by phone at (515) 975-3557.
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