PEOPLE ▶▶▶
AB Vista AB Vista has appointed Juan Ignacio Fernandez as its new managing direc- tor, replacing Richard Cooper who has retired af- ter 16 years in the role. Fer- nandez, the former sales di- rector for the EMEA region, has taken over the role from 1 September.
Zinpro Trace minerals company Zinpro has announced two new appointments. In North America, the company hired Megan Lehman as global marketing manager, serving on the global advisory teams for swine and aquaculture. In ad- dition, in Russia, the company appointed Maya Rumyant- seva as swine account manager. From Moscow, she will provide customers with commercial and technical support.
Iowa State University This summer, the Iowa Pork Industry Center welcomed Stacie Matchan as exten- sion programme specialist. She will be responsible for coordinating conferences and webinars, handling centre finances and helping develop a new research programme.
PIC
On 1 October 2020, Dr Cord Lellbach started in his posi- tion as general manager of PIC Deutschland. He will be re- sponsible for PIC’s business in the important markets of Germany, Austria and Poland.
DLG The German Agricultural So- ciety (DLG) has appointed Ines Rathke as project manager for the EuroTier ex- hibition. She joined DLG this year and will be assuming the new role in 2021, work- ing alongside the current project manager, Dr Karl Schlösser in the interim period.
Hamlet Protein Hamlet Protein has welcomed two technical sales consult- ants for Latin America. Dr Jose Luis Laparra, a vet and nutritionist, will cover Mexico and Central America. Ange- la Mejia, a vet and engineer, will cover South America.
40 ▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 8, 2020 Examining alternatives to castration
During a recent webinar facilitated by the EU-supported group Innovative Ap- proaches for Pork Production with En- tire Males (IPEMA), several alternatives to castration of piglets were discussed. IPEMA classifies surgical castration with pain relief as an intermediate short- term solution that is inefficient and adds costs. Focusing on two alterna- tives, IPEMA found that leaving the pigs uncastrated as entire males increased the aggressive behaviour and caused
mounting. Also, there were issues with boar taint on the meat, lower fat amounts and meat being less tender. With immunocastration there are also issues, including stress during vaccina- tion and concerns over meat quality depending on the timing of the second vaccination compared to the time of slaughter. The biggest challenge is that most EU markets are reluctant to ac- cept this as they assume consumers are against it.
Better efficiency of ramp loading
New research in the US looked at the benefits of adding a ramp in nursery housing, as an estimated 1% of all mar- ket pigs are affected by transport-relat- ed losses. “Typically, pigs have little or no exposure to many aspects of load- ing, handling and transport before the time of marketing, including walking up and down ramps,” noted a group of US scientists and technicians at North Dakota State, Arkansas State and Iowa State universities. They published a new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Animal Science. The researchers hypothesised that placing ramps in the nursery pen and having pigs use them at this stage would mean that at trans- port time, the pigs wouldn’t face a nov-
el (and stressful) situation and there- fore would load more quickly and efficiently. In the study, the research team randomly assigned 72 weanling crossbred hogs to two groups, one with and one without a ramp. At marketing, the hogs familiar with ramps required about half the time to ascend the ramp into the truck com- pared with those unfamiliar with ramps (30 vs 59 seconds). In their pa- per, the research team concluded that “adding ramps to nursery housing is a simple and relatively inexpensive ad- aptation with the potential to improve the welfare of pigs during the nursery phase and at loading via a ramp for the market.”
PHOTO: DLG
PHOTO: ISU
PHOTO: AB VISTA
PHOTO: S. WAGNER ET AL./APPLIED ANIMAL SCIENCE
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