I am intrigued by the word “balance,” as it has come up a few times when discussing some of the more contentious issues facing the industry. Most recently, I was interviewed for a documentary on modern swine production. Following this lengthy interview for a college project, I suggested that the group doing the project should maintain a balanced approach to their production of this piece of communications work. I was curious about what Webster would say about the word balance so I looked it up. There are numerous definitions for balance, many having to do with accounting or mathematics. However,... View Blog Post »

Just about everyone has an opinion about what pork producers individually or as a body should do about the gestating sow stall issue. Here is mine. Part of my career experiences was as general manager of a 30,000-sow operation. That system used all sow stalls as most did back then almost 20 years ago. Everyone in the industry knows of the value of keeping sows in stalls to prevent fighting and to individually feed the sows so each receives its allotted ration. Of course, some of the new penning arrangements also allow for individual feeding, which helps prevent the boss... View Blog Post »

I have been involved in pork quality for almost twenty years, having had the responsibility for the pork quality program with the pork producers for many years in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. We made great strides in understanding, defining, measuring, surveying, educating and developing programs aimed at pork quality improvement throughout the pork chain. The base from which we began allowed a lot of progress in a few short years. The evolution seemed like it followed ten-year trends. In the 80’s, we knew about performance traits such as growth rate and feed efficiency, but we were still trying to... View Blog Post »

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