Preparing Producers for Canada’s Updated Pig Code of Practice Among Prairie Swine Centre’s Research Priorities

The Prairie Swine Center’s recently appointed Research Scientist Ethology says her priorities moving forward will be to advance work by Drs. Yolande Seddon, Jenifer Brown and Harold Gonyou with a focus on preparing farmers for upcoming changes to Canada’s Pig Code of Practice. The mandate of the Prairie Swine Center, operated by the University of Saskatchewan, is to produce and distribute knowledge derived through original research, scientific review and economic analysis on behalf of the pork sector. Dr. Jen-Yun Chou, who moved into the position of Research Scientist Ethology with the center in March, says consumers and the general public are increasingly concerned with food safety, the general health and welfare of animals and how food production relates to sustainability and the environmental footprint.

Quote-Dr. Jen-Yun Chou-Prairie Swine Center:
Our primary priorities and focus for now is definitely to enhance the rearing environment to actually improve the general animal welfare and also productivity and also trying to help the producer comply with the NFAC pig code of practice, especially in terms of the transition towards group housing for sows and also we’re trying to work a little bit more on environmental enrichment to increase the diversity of the environment that the pigs are reared in. Hopefully that will improve their welfare and also their performance.
Currently we actually have projects working with our commercial partners on both of these issues. One is on the sow performance in different group sow housing types and also in relation to management practices. Also, we’re doing an enrichment project with our commercial partners. And, we want to explore what makes enrichment really good and what can be done to make enrichment really effective. This will be brought into the upcoming code of practice update.

Dr. Chou will be profiling her work next week in Saskatoon during Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2024 and at the Banff Pork Seminar in January. She notes a new website is also planned.