Along with the joining into WTO by China, the pig industry in China will have very good development opportunity while facing with serious challenges. The position of pig producers will change and the development of technology will be very fierce. The capacity of pig producers to react to such changing situation will determine their future competitiveness and development prospect in very large extent. Due to the fact that people increasingly show greater concern on food safety, therefore, the State Administration for Quality Supervision and Quarantine had approved and released 8 state standard related to agricultural product safety and quality on September 6, 2001. The Ministry of Agriculture had made public appearance the sector standards for 73 pollution-free agricultural products in the first batch on September 7, 2002. These standards have entered into implementation nation-wide since October 1, 2001. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture has initiated the “Pollution-Free Food Action Plan” and its test point work has been undertaken in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Shenzhen cities. Along with the improvement of people’s living standard, people’s consciousness of environment protection has been continuously enhanced and the “Administration Measures for Pollution Control in Livestock and Poultry Husbandry” approved by the State Bureau of Environment Protection on March 20, 2001 is a testimony in this aspect. To counter this new situation, pig industry in China should be fully prepared and have corresponding countermeasures.

1. Selection of Farm Sites

In years when green consciousness strikes root in the hearts of the people, two changes have taken place in pig industry in China in regional distribution. Most pig enterprises oriented their efforts to regions of sales market and fairly strong technical force, including export market. Under today’s situation when market economy is prevalent, the situation of market sales will determine pig demand and pig price, and pig breeders near the slaughterhouse have advantage in this aspect.

Enterprise groups of strong strength will tend establish pig farms in regions with mild climate, good water resources and rich land resources to produce quality livestock products. Appropriate climatic environment is beneficial to pig healthy growth, and beneficial to produce quality organic animal products, while in very hot or very cold regions, the cost of insulate pens and cooling or heating equipment is very high. Adequate water resources are the necessary preconditions for large-scale pig production. Poor water quality will reduce production performance by a big margin and increase production cost. The increase of water use will result in the dropping of underground water level in regions where underground water is used for animal production, which has aroused worries by people. Water resources in the future may be the major factor to determine the location of pig farms. Due to the improvement of people’s environment protection consciousness and the coming of micro profit age in animal production, rational use of animal feces will become an important content of pig farms. Feces are a quality organic fertilizer; therefore, the area that can be used to treat feces will become one of the important factors, which determines the scale and location of the pig enterprises.

2. Pig Utilization

Along with the improvement of science and technology and people’s living standards, there has appeared a trend of pig utilization diversity, pork is mainly used as food, medicine, industrial raw material, laboratory animal, and biological-reactor, but also can be used as pet animals.

3. Pig breeding

In the new century, profound changes will take place in the 3 aspects of breeding content, breeding structure and breeding means of pig breeding.

Breeding Content:

The trend of breeding content is developing toward more diversification, in addition to the breeding orientation of using pig mainly as food, pigs can be used as medicine, industrial raw materials, laboratory animals, biological reactors, and more pigs are to be used as special breeds for recreation or entertainment, of which, food pig breeds will develop towards the orientation of quality meat.

Breeding Structure:

The trend of breeding structure is more and more distributed nucleus herd, and the main stream is international hybrid pig production. The members of breeding structure will gradually increase, breeding program will combine breeding companies and the government, pig farms of various kinds will establish genetic links through artificial insemination. Unified analysis of information from the nucleus herd, breeding herd, commercial herd, slaughterhouse and artificial insemination will be used as reference to formulate breeding programs or revise them when necessary.

Breeding Means:

In addition to traditional breeding means, genome as well as gene of important economic characters, QTL, position technology, molecular biological technology of super high prolific breeding, genetic resources conservation and the application of molecular biological technology will be used in large quantities in the practice of pig breeding.

4. Pig Feed

Pig feed will have new changes in the aspects of feed formula, feed additives and feed formulation.

Feed Formula:

Due to the differences in pig breeds and feeding environment, NRC model is not appropriate for China’s local condition. Therefore, China needs to formulate a feed formulation model suitable for China’s local conditions.

Feed Additives

The trend of feed additives will be enter the world tide of pollution-free and green feed, particularly, enzymatic reagent, prebiotics and herbal medicinal additives will witness a rapid development.

Feed Formulation:

Feed expanding technology, feed pelleting technology and spraying and mixing technology after pelleting will be applied in an all-round way. People will pay great attention to the different milling fineness for different pig herds.

5. Pig Management

In feeding management, all-in and all-out method, isolated early weaning technology, the application of quality gene and feeding methods for different sex and in different phases will be applied in pig production in an all-round way. In addition, people are more interested in the design of feeder.

All-in and All-out System:

The use of all-in and all-out system can reduce the morbidity of pigs, but should be combined with thorough cleaning and cross infection among pig herds.

Isolated Early Weaning System:

Pig farms of good conditions will adopt isolated early weaning system. When protective maternal antibody is still at high levels, early weaning can avoid vertical disease transmission from adult pigs to piglets. Continuous pig herd isolation can prevent horizontal disease transmission of pathogenic microorganisms. The earlier the wean age, the few infection of piglets, with the most common weaning age of 14-16 days.

Multiple point management is a management technology, which increasingly become important in isolated early weaning procedure. This technology should be isolated early-weaned piglet with other pigs so as to prevent disease transmission. The greater the distance between pig houses within a pig farm the better the disease prevention results. All equipment and facilities should be designed strictly in accordance with the principle of all-in and all-out.

Utilization of Quality Gene:

It is essential to make full use of quality gene of the pig farms through establishing the nucleus herd of the pig farm, or can be realized through the import of the semen of quality boars by artificial insemination methods so as to improve the production performance of pig farms.

Feed Pigs according to Sex:

As compared with brawners (castrated boars), gilts are growing fairly slowly, with small feed intake, but the gilts have a fairly good feed conversion rate and a higher lean pork percentage in same body weight. While consuming fairly few feed, their lysine demand is the same as brawners (castrated boars). When adopting feeding pigs according to sex, it is essential to formulate separate feed formulas according to the difference in feed protein and energy requirements between boars and sows. Feeding pigs according to sex can not only increase feed utilization rate but also can increase the evenness of market hogs. Meanwhile, it can also postpone the market time for sows.

Feeding Pigs according to Growth Period:

The nutrition requirement of modern pigs is changing very rapidly, particularly in the early growth period of high lean pork percentage pigs and even in finishing period. In order to make full use of the genetic potential of pigs, it is essential to divide the pig growth periods into more feeding phases. In pig farms that have good feeding conditions, it is essential to adopt 12 different feed formulas while in feeding pig according to sex 16 different feed formulas should be used.

Feeder Design:

Feeder design can play an important role in feed consumption and feed waste. If pigs feed uncomfortable when feed intake, the feed intake will eventually reduce and daily gain can also decline. Continuous adjusting feeder is also very important. If the feeder is not adjusted accordingly it will influence feed intake of pigs.

Source: www.pigswine.com