The end of April marked the loss of Dr. Stanley Curtis, an animal scientist and researcher retired from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The brief summaries of his contributions to pig production listed his numerous accomplishments. He was influential in his research as well as his efforts and willingness to educate the Washington political establishment about production animal welfare.
My path first crossed that of Dr. Curtis’ when attending a Discover Conference on Sow Productive Lifetime in 2007. He spoke on how to measure a sow’s state of being. And in this age of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Curtis went to the front of the room and comfortably made a series of simple, logical arguments as he progressed through bullet points listed on a sheet of paper.
Animal welfare and well-being is a topic of growing public concern. Animal rights groups have been actively pursuing corporate policies and legislation to specify acceptable production housing systems. The challenge from the research perspective is that “well-being” is a measure of emotions and feelings. But emotions and feelings are not really measurable or quantifiable—especially in production animals. Productivity (growth and reproduction), however, is a viable proxy measure for animal well-being, since it is a sensitive indicator of how well animals are coping with their environment.
It is generally accepted that an animal’s state of being is equivalent to its condition of existence. The animal’s state of being reflects its success in coping with the external and internal threats to its steady-state condition. Successful coping is adaptation, and unsuccessful coping is stress.
There are three possible states of being: “well” reflects an animal adapted; “fair” reflects an animal having some difficulty adapting and maybe a little stress; and “poor” reflects stress. The goal for production is to have animals in a state of being that is well most of the time, fair some of the time and poor infrequently. There is no perfect production system, so to expect anything different is unrealistic.
Stress is negatively related with performance, as animals spend their energy in unsuccessful coping. Studies in chicks have shown that stressors are additive, and removal of even a single stressor reduces the overall stress of the animal. Energy not spent on maintenance or coping with stress is available for growth and reproduction. Performance, therefore, is a highly sensitive indicator of stress. And since performance reflects stress and state of being reflects stress, performance reflects state of being.
Sow performance is attributable to genetic variation, environmental variation and an interaction of the two. Heritability of reproductive traits in swine is notoriously low—explaining only about 15 percent of the performance variation we observe. That means environmental effects and the interaction between environmental effects and genetics account for the remaining 85 percent of the performance variation we observe.
For the sow, reproductive performance is a lower priority than survival. And since the sow’s productive lifetime is a function of her coping ability, variation in the sow productive lifetime reflects variation in the sow’s state of being.
As pig producers, we are being called upon to educate consumers and lawmakers about our commitment to animal welfare and well-being. In a society where household pets are common and the human-animal bond is promoted, it can be difficult to explain how much we truly care about—and need to care about—the well-being of our animals. Thankfully, Dr. Curtis, has left us with the tools to describe our pigs’ well-being and the language to communicate it with the public.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Stephanie Rutten-Ramos is an independent consultant. To visit with her, send her an e-mail at: rutt0011@umn.edu
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