Michel Bonneau: Exploring Sustainability in Pork Production

M. Bonneau¹*, S. Edwards², K De Greef³, J.Y. Dourmad¹, C. Phatsara⁴, L. Rydhmer⁵,
H. Edge², E. Fabrega⁶, J. Gonzalez⁶, P. Eidnes-Sorensen⁷, M. Hviid⁷, V. Laugé⁸, E. Ilari⁸

 

Objectives

The overall objective is to contribute to the development of a diversity of sustainable production systems (at farm level) that correspond to market and society demands.

 

Specific objectives are as follows:

1. To develop tools for standardized assessment of the various dimensions of sustainability;
2. To evaluate the sustainability of the variety of existing pork production systems;
3. To improve current systems and develop improved systems towards a better market and sustainability orientation.

Methodology

A review of existing tools to evaluate the sustainability of pig production system was conducted. From the review, a handbook of SOPs for tools was derived and gaps and weaknesses in the tools were identified for further work on tool development. Inventories of existing production systems and quality assurance schemes were performed. They formed the bases for selecting 15 contrasted systems to be thoroughly evaluated and for studies on system improvement and development.

 

 

Results & Discussion

Nine different tools were developed for the evaluation of the sustainability of pig production systems at farm level. They cover the 3 main pillars of sustainability:
environment, economy and society.

Animal health and welfare, and genetic resources are directly related to the animal. Economy and working conditions are the most important dimensions for the farmers, whereas meat quality and safety are the key issues for the consumers. Representatives of the society are surveyed for the assessment of societal conformity.
 

 

Regarding the improvement of tools, two studies are presently carried out in the fields of working conditions (develop validated protocols for assessing them) and environmental impact (coupling between Life Cycle Analysis and mechanistic flow models at farm level). Fifteen contrasted systems were selected in 5 countries (one conventional and two differentiated systems per country). They are currently evaluated, using the above-described handbook of tools.

 

The work on quality assurance schemes and implementation of the HACCP concept at farm level is currently going on. Regarding the improvement of systems, studies are carried out on the development of a pig breeding program to increase the sustainability of systems, and of a need-based space allowance model to optimise between pig welfare and economic returns. On the basis of the identified gaps and weaknesses in systems, more studies will be designed and performed from 2010 onwards. The inventory of existing production systems at farm level resulted in the identification of 40 systems having no claim (conventional) and 44 systems having one or several claim(s) for differentiation: welfare (68% of the 44 systems with claims), eating quality (70%), nutritional quality (25%), environment (41%), organic (25%), local (9%).

 

Multidimensional analysis followed by automatic classification resulted in the identification of 3 groups of systems. The attributes of the left-side group were typical of conventional intensive systems. Those of the group in the upright corner were typical of more "marginal" systems. It was more difficult to characterize the third group which was qualified as intermediate. Differences between production systems were further analysed according to claim. The results cannot be presented in the context of the present two pages summary.

 

 

Conclusions

The handbook of tools has been valorised as e-learning material. Its use on 15 contrasted systems will be a good test to check its practicability on the field. It is eventually destined to become an international reference for the evaluation of the sustainability of pig production systems at farm level. The inventory of systems showed that the claims for differentiation were not systematically associated with actual improvement in the corresponding relevant dimension. More work is currently on the way, or will be performed from 2010 onwards, for the improvement of tools and systems.

 

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge from the European Community financial participation under the Sixth Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities, for the Integrated Project Q-PORKCHAINS FOOD-CT-2007-036245.