Pig production, health and genetics

摘要

The pig industry in Europe has changed enormously in the last 40 years and is likely to change at least as radically in the next 10 years. Average herd size has steadily increased and the number of herds decreased. Scientific advances in genetics andperformance, production methods, nutrition and disease control along with improvements in welfare, food safety and marketing have been widely applied and will continue to be applied. Nevertheless, the current pig production has to cope with a number of developments affecting its future, like an increase of costs of labour, farm buildings, energy, environmental costs and welfare, and at the same time at the very best a constant but more likely decreasing level of prices for meat or piglets. Those two facts together mean a continuous pressure on cost of production (per piglet and/or per kilogram carcase produced) and on total farm revenue.