ProPIG - farm specific strategies to reduce environmental impact by improving health, welfare and nutrition of organic pigs

• Forschungsstelle: BLW
• Projektnummer: 07.12_3
• Projekttitel Englisch: ProPIG - farm specific strategies to reduce environmental impact by improving health, welfare and nutrition of organic pigs

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

Robust and competitive organic pig production needs to encompass low environmental impacts and good animal health and welfare. In theory, improving animal health and welfare reduces environmental impacts through decreased medicine use, improved growth rates and feed conversion efficiency. However, as data on environmental impacts are scarce, the extent of such improvement has never been verified on working farms. In organic pig production, health and welfare improvements must be implemented through preventive approaches, optimal disease management and innovative systems regarding outdoor areas. This poses a challenge to the farms. Together, organic regulations, different national welfare regulations and different building traditions have promoted the development of a variety of housing systems, outdoor rearing and management strategies across the EU. The relative environmental impacts of these have not been quantified. This diversity offers real potential to aid improvement, if the ‘best’ can act as role models for others, which might be more effective than adapting practice derived from experimental systems. This project includes data recording on organic pig farms, calculations of nutrient balances and Life Cycle Assessment for several contrasting scenarios and the development and evaluation of farm specific improvement strategies.
At the beginning of the project husbandry systems will be defined, (e.g. outdoor / partly outdoor / indoor with concrete outside run). After development of on-farm assessment protocols a cross-sectional survey and a prospective cohort study will be carried out on about 33 farms of each system across ten different European countries. Environmental impacts will be assessed using both Life Cycle Assessment and calculations of nutrient balances at farm and outdoor area level. Animal health and welfare will be evaluated from outcome measures of clinical scoring and selected behavioural parameters. Results will be fed back to farmers as benchmarking reports, based on which the farmer will decide farm specific goals and strategies to achieve these. As an outcome all farms create their individual health, welfare and environmental plan, which will be reviewed after one year to allow continuous development.
The relationship between health, welfare and environmental impacts will be examined using factor analysis and multiple correspondence analyses. Thereby, farms can be grouped based on common housing and management characteristics, and groups be compared regarding outcome parameters. Furthermore, the effect of farming system on health, welfare and environmental impact will be assessed with multivariate models, taking into account the climatic conditions... The farm specific strategies will be evaluated by assessing within-farm improvement in measured criteria over 12 months. Dissemination activities will include the development of a decision support tool for improvement of environmental impact and a summary of successful improvement strategies (codes of practice). These will be presented as a booklet and training material for organic pig farmers and advisors, which will be introduced during national courses.
The proposed project will take a holistic approach and combine several key objectives: management of outdoor areas, disease prevention, optimizing nutrition and innovative interacting strategies for improvement to support extension services.

Kunden/Berichterstattung (Deutsch)

Der Schlussbericht und das Handbuch “Verbesserung der Tiergesundheit und des Tierwohls in der Bioschweinehaltung“ liegt dem BLW vor.

Es wurden diverse Publikationen in landwirtschaftlichen und wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften veröffentlicht.

Webseite: www.coreorganic2.org/propig

Kunden/Berichterstattung (Englisch)

The findings were compiled into a handbook for farmers which shows simple measures to increase animal health and welfare.

Publikationen / Ergebnisse (Deutsch)

Das Projekt hat ein Handbuch zur Verbesserung der Tiergesundheit und des Tierwohls in der Bioschweinehaltung generiert, welches auf Deutsch und Französisch übersetzt wurde und auf der FiBL-Webseite kostenlos zur Verfügung steht. Das Handbuch erklärt auf anschauliche Weise wie Fruchtbarkeitsprobleme, Durchfall, Atemwegserkrankungen, Verletzungen und andere Gesundheitsprobleme in der Bioschweinehaltung auftreten können, und Massnahmen, um diese zu bewältigen. Dementsprechend ist der Nutzen für Bio-Schweinehalter gross. In gedruckter Form hat das Handbuch ein praktisches Format, um in den Stall mitgenommen werden zu können.

Publikationen / Ergebnisse (Englisch)

In theory, improving animal health and welfare reduces environmental impacts through decreased medicine use, improved growth rates and feed conversion efficiency.

In organic pig production, health and welfare improvements must be implemented through preventive approaches, optimal disease management and innovative systems regarding outdoor areas. Organic regulations, different national animal welfare regulations and different building traditions have led to the development of a variety of management strategies across the EU. This diversity offers a great potential to develop improvement strategies, since best practices can act as role models.

The key objectives of the project were to investigate the interaction of animal health and welfare with environmental impact, to identify best practice and to create tools for farmers to improve health, welfare, nutrition, management and environmental impact of organic pigs.

At the beginning of the project husbandry systems were defined (outdoor / partly outdoor / indoor with concrete outside run). A survey on about 25 organic farms of each system across eight different European countries was conducted. Environmental impacts were assessed using Life Cycle Assessment and calculations of nutrient balances. Animal health and welfare were evaluated from clinical scoring and selected behavioral parameters. Results were fed back to farmers as benchmarking reports, based on which the farmer chose farm specific goals and strategies to achieve these. Thus, all farms created their individual health, welfare and environmental plan, which was reviewed after one year to allow continuous development.

The effect of farming systems on health, welfare and environmental impact were assessed with multivariate models, taking into account the climatic conditions. The farm specific strategies were evaluated by assessing within-farm improvement in measured criteria over 12 months.

Results indicated that most organic pig farms across Europe did encompass low environmental impacts and good animal health and welfare. The three main husbandry systems did not differ regarding greenhouse warming potential or total Nitrogen balances, but indoor systems were significantly better regarding P balances. Partially outdoor systems were better than indoor systems regarding acidification, and regarding eutrophication indoor systems were better than outdoor systems. The variation between the stages of rearing within the management systems was greater than the variation between systems. The consequences for environmental impact require a longer term assessment to take account of the delay in outcomes and seasonal influences.

Regarding animal health and welfare, outdoor systems had advantages, whereas indoor systems performed better regarding fattener productivity.

Concerning farm specific improvement strategies, 81.6 % of the goals set by farmers were partly or completely achieved.