Banff Pork Seminar-Farmscape for January 19, 2006  (Episode 2033)

An Alberta based swine veterinarian is calling on hog producers to take action to reduce the levels of trim that can result from arthritis, chest adhesions and abscesses.

In an effort to better understand and address the problem of trim loss Alberta Agriculture Food and Rural Development looked at 40 herds that had the highest rates of trim over six months and then surveyed the producers  to look at management factors that might be a risk.

Dr. Julia Keenliside told those on hand for the Banff Pork Seminar that, while trim loss is a cost for both the producer and the processor, it's the processor that takes the brunt of the hit.

Clip-Dr. Julia Keenliside-Alberta Agriculture Food and Rural Development  

The producer loses the weight of the actual trim.

If a leg is cut off, for example, they lose just that weight.

The processor not only loses that but they lose the primal cut surrounding the trim.

For example the hind leg is cut off and the ham is damaged they can't sell the ham as a primal cut anymore.

They also end up having the extra labor involved to take the carcass off and trim it and that's hard to add that up.

There's also costs involved when the line has to be stopped.

When you have a line in a high line speed large plant going, it's suggested it's about a thousand dollars a minute to stop that line and have everybody waiting while you clear out some of these hogs that need trimming.

It's not hard to think that if you have a load of 300 hogs and 150 of them need trimming, as sometimes happens, you can stop the line for 15 or 20 minutes, you have 20 thousand dollars loss right there to the processor.

Dr. Keenliside says, while some operations are consistently down at zero, other operations may be as high as 50 percent.

She says the study found those who were consistently high had on farm problems such as significant disease challenges or challenges with the environment in the buildings.

She says those with low levels generally had newer facilities, less disease and high health stock.

She recommends monitoring trim rates closely, setting some action limits, involving a veterinarian and the packing plant and designing a program to reduce trim as much as possible.

At the Banff Pork Seminar, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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