Farmscape for April 18, 2013

A recently completed producer survey has found most believe PRRS-free herd certification would add little to the cost of raising a pig but certified breeding stock would be worth more.
The Western Canada PRRS-Free Herd Certification Pilot Project, administered by the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board on behalf of the Canadian Swine Health Board through 2011 and 2012, provided suppliers of live pigs a protocol to certify their animals as free of PRRS.
To assess the program's value a study was conducted to evaluate the cost of participating, producer attitudes toward the program, the willingness of swine purchasers to pay for herd certification and the global meat trade implications.
Mark Ferguson, the manager of industry and policy analysis with Sask Pork says, just under two thousand producers across Canada were questioned.

Clip-Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
Basically we found that the cost to producers to participate is fairly low.
For a producer that did all the testing and submitted the data it would be about 11 cents per pig for a 600 sow farrow to finish operation.
Another key finding was that only 15 percent of respondents believed that a certification program would decrease their costs so producers didn't feel that this type of program would result in lower cost to verify PRRS status however 58 percent of the respondents believed that certified stock would be worth more while 42 percent believed it would be worth the same.
It seems that the value of the program is probably not in reducing the costs but it may provide value in terms of an increased price to producers that are selling the animals.

Ferguson says an extensive literature review found Australia and New Zealand are the only countries that restrict meat imports from PRRS positive countries and the only major product affected is pork shoulders so PRRS free status is likely to remain a low priority in terms of the buying decisions of packers and exporters and is unlikely to return a premium for live market hogs.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council