Romania confirmed an outbreak of African swine fever on a large pig farm in the western county of Timis, on Wednesday October 13.  

It was also confirmed that 39,000 animals will be culled and that local authorities and the food safety agency were meeting up to agree on next steps, Reuters reported.

County prefect Mihai Ritivoiu confirmed the outbreak on Facebook, saying: “It is official, there is an outbreak in Timis. We must take measures to combat the spread of the disease. A priority is to protect two other farms, each with tens of thousands of pigs, located a few kilometres away.”

Romania has already reported hundreds of cases this year, including several large farms, as well as smallholdings and ‘backyard’ pigs.

 

By Meghan Taylor / Pig World

Weekly pig prices, slaughter data for Great Britain

The EU-spec GB SPP continued moving in the right direction in the week ended October 8, inching up by 0.18p to reach 200.55p/kg.

This is the second successive weekly increase, following the reverse in the week ended September 24 and means the SPP has risen by less than 0.6p over the past four weeks as the upward trajectory slows, and means the index is 44p on a year ago.

The APP was back up by nearly a penny, 0.9p, for the week ended October 1. At 203.57p/kg, the gap between it and the SPP was just 3.2p.

The context is, of course, that average prices remain below average costs, estimated by AHDB at 221p/kg for August.

The EU price is critical to the UK market and the large gulf between the UK and EU prices over the summer has contributed to increased volumes of pork imports. As EU prices have risen that gap has closed in recent weeks.

For the week ending October 2, the EU Reference stood at just short of 187p/kg, compared with a UK reference price of 200.7p/kg, the gap of under 14p comparing with more than 30p at some points in August. However, the rise in EU prices has stalled, with some key producers recording falls in recent weeks.

 

Pig World / AHDB

Technology to grow meat in a laboratory has entered the next stage of testing in more than 10 sites around the world after successfully completing proof of concept in Scotland.

The new approach to generating pig cell lines for cultivated meat has been developed by Roslin Technologies and the University of Edinburgh with support from the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC). Researchers say it could overcome a critical bottleneck in the commercial production of laboratory-grown meat, which has been a lack of cost-effective ways of growing cells at large scale.

By Kirsty Dorsey / The Herald

More than half of all geese destined for Christmas dinner tables have been culled after another outbreak of bird flu.

Government vets confirmed the outbreak at a farm in Breckland, Norfolk, as bird flu spreads across the east of England.

 

 

By Lisa Young / South West Farmer

(CNN) – A burp or fart at the dinner table might land you in trouble – but if you’re a cow or sheep in New Zealand, it might land your owner a hefty tax bill.

Prime Minister Jacinda Arden confirmed at a press conference on Tuesday that her government will push ahead with a proposal to make farmers pay for their livestock’s emissions in a bid to combat climate change.

“This is an important step forward in New Zealand’s transition to a low emissions future and delivers on our promise to price agriculture emissions from 2025,” Ardern said.

New Zealand is a major livestock and meat exporter, and has around 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep. Agricultural accounts for half of the country’s total emissions, including 91% of its biogenic emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide in the short term.

“No other country in the world has yet developed a system for pricing and reducing agricultural emissions, so our farmers are set to benefit from being first movers,” Ardern said.

Andrew Hoggard, president of the rural advocacy agency Federated Farmers, said in a statement that the government’s plan will “rip the guts out of small town New Zealand.”

“We didn’t sign up for this. It’s gut-wrenching to think we now have this proposal from government which rips the heart out of the work we did. Out of the families who farm this land,” he said. “Our plan was to keep farmers farming. Now they’ll be selling up so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute as they drive off.”

By Christian Edwards / CNN

Processors blamed lacklustre retail demand for British pork for poor uptake of pigs last week, according to Thames Valley Cambac. 

TVC described the 19% year-on-year increase in pork import volumes, as highlighted in the last issue of Pig World, as ‘disappointing’, but noted that this level of imports matches pre Covid levels, while the same reporting period shows exports have increased.

“Supplies continue to tighten as producers leave the industry, but slaughter weights are creeping back up, as processors keep number allocations tight,” TVC said in its latest market update.

Price contributions stood on, and the SPP improved 0.36p to 200.37p, but pig returns are still way below cost of production and, unfortunately, industry exits continue.

Prices in Europe eased again with the Netherlands down 7 eurocents – a realignment following Germany’s fall last week. The Euro ended the week down 0.92p at 87.38p.

There was little weaner demand outside regular contract commitments, as raw materials remain volatile and uncertainty in the finished market leaves fatteners with little confidence. There was insufficient data for the AHDB to formulate any prices.

 

Alistair Driver / Pig World

VACCINATION rather than mass culling of livestock should be Australia’s response to foot and mouth disease (FMD), according to livestock biosecurity experts.

Addressing an MLA biosecurity breakfast in Brisbane on Tuesday, the three speakers endorsed vaccination over the ‘triple D’ response – “destroy, dispose and decontamination”.

One exception, however, could be small localised outbreak, said Dr Peter Dagg: “If we have a very localised, a very small outbreak – if that happens – then we might not use vaccine. Slaughter will be a component in the hot spots where the disease is actually identified on an infected premises.”

Animal Health Australia’s head of AUSVETPLAN continued: “The strategy is more about movement controls because FMD is a contagious disease, so it’s all about movement controls and restricting the  potential spread of the virus.”

He stressed the availability of vaccine for Australian livestock producers. “We have a vaccine bank held over in the UK and they will make up vaccine and move it to Australia within seven days of us requesting it, if we have an outbreak,” he said.

MLA’s program manager of animal wellbeing, Dr Michael Laurence said: “I don’t believe culling animals would be the way to control foot and mouth, should it come into Australia. Vaccine will be the first line of defence.”

 

Sue Webster / Beef Central  

Meat group Danish Crown has pared its plans for potential job job cuts at two local slaughterhouses.

Last month, Danish Crown flagged 350 redundancies at abattoirs in Sæby and Ringsted because of fewer pigs coming in for slaughter as farmers grapple with “record-high” feed and energy costs, with some giving up all together.

However, those numbers have now been more than halved through a combination of longer working days with more breaks and a reshuffling of staff.

At Sæby, a town on the east coast of Denmark, 275 jobs were originally slated to be culled but that now falls to around 115, a company spokesperson confirmed. More staff will shift to a daytime working pattern producing ham and will take an additional 15-minute break to allow for a longer day.

A further 75 jobs were set to be axed at the abattoir in Ringsted, a city 60km from the capital Copenhagen. Those have been cut to 25 as some workers have opted for voluntary redundancies or moved into other functions at the slaughterhouse.

The reduction in pig numbers has also affected Tönnies in Germany. Between 500 and 600 slaughtering and cutting positions have been eliminated since June across its sites in Sögel, Lower Saxony, and Weißenfels in the south of Saxony-Anhalt. The UK arm of meat processor Pilgrim’s Pride has also set out plans to close two pig slaughterhouses, putting 675 jobs at risk.

 

By Simon Harvey / Just Food

British lamb has now been exported to the United States for the first time in over 20 years, in a deal estimated to be worth £37m in the first five years of trade.

The first consignment since the deal was struck last year was flown to the US this week, containing lamb produced by processors Dunbia from its site in Carmarthenshire.

A ban on British lamb exports to the US had been in place since 1989 due to concerns around BSE, commonly known as ‘mad cow disease’.

The small ruminant rule that banned the product was rescinded by the US government in January of this year.

The industry estimates that the US market will be worth £37m in the first five years of trade, opening up access for farmers to a market of over 300m consumers.

Andrew Smyth, commercial director at Dunbia said: “As the largest processor of lamb in the UK, it is imperative we continue to have access to new and emerging international markets, and we welcome the small ruminant rule amendment.

“We continue to work closely with AHDB to identify and develop new market opportunities for our quality British produce.”

 

Farming UK

The occurrence of Salmonella in raw pet food seems to be rising in Great Britain.

Raw meat pet food had the highest number of Salmonella contaminated samples of all the feeds tested by the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency scientists. The agency report “Salmonella in Animals and Feed in Great Britain 2021” documented an upward trend.

In 2021, the agency’s laboratories isolated 295 instances of Salmonella from raw pet food available on the British market. That’s up 8.1% from 2020’s 273 isolations, and 20.4% higher than 2019 with 245 isolations.

Some of these Salmonella bacteria were from strains with resistance to drugs used to fight infection and were found in 71 of the samples taken in 2021.

These made up 57.3% of the total regulated varieties of Salmonella found by APHA in 2021 among all feeds and locations tested.

The proportion of drug-resistant Salmonella in British raw meat pet food didn’t increase much over 2020, but did show an upward tendency compared to 2019.

“Contaminated raw meat pet food, which does not undergo any heat treatment to deactivate pathogens, may therefore represent a potential source of infection to both the dogs consuming it and people who handle it, especially if insufficient hygiene measures are adopted,” the report authors wrote.

 

Tim Wall / PetfoodIndustry.com