With the meat prices of late, picking fat pockets and stealing glistening jewels has become old-fashioned – thieves are gunning for pork now! You read that right: three semi-trailers worth of pork product were stolen from a plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, on Thursday, totaling over $100,000 in stolen meat.

• The police responded to a call regarding the stolen vehicles at a meat packing plant, JBS, allegedly used in the theft of pork. The product was ready to be distributed.
• All trailers were eventuall...

Feed prices continue to rise in the swine industry. With the contant fluctuations and unpredictability, we always need to evaluating the potential to use novel sources to provide pigs with nutrients. In this episode with Dr. Lee-Anne Huber, we talk about a black soldier fly larvae meal and its use in nursery diets and its cost and availability.

Meet the guest: Dr. Lee-Anne Huber was raised on a mixed farm of beef cattle and pigs just north of Guelph, Ontario. She decided to attend the U...

Lawsonia intracellularis, the bacteria that causes ileitis, leads to poor animal performance through poor feed conversion, and even mortality for pigs. That’s why it is a major concern for many pig producers across the globe. Therefore, it's essential to understand how sows contribute to maintaining Lawsonia in the farms. How does it happen? When does it happen? And how can we control the situation? In this episode, Rachel Patton and I discuss Lawsonia intracellularis shedding by sows on commerc...

Why should the US pork industry continue to pay attention to the Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) in Australia? Paul Sundberg, DVM, executive director of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC), provides a straightforward answer: because it could happen to the US next.

• According to Dr. Sundberg, past experiences have taught a powerful lesson: just because a problem might seem distant, it doesn’t mean you’re immune to it.
• Preparedness is key. If the disease does reach the US, we can’t aff...

Martin Heydon, Minister of State at Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, learned about research aimed at improving pig health and advancing an understanding of beneficial viruses. The study is funded by the US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership, a tripartite collaboration between the USDA and its equivalents in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

• The delegation was invited to check out a project seeking new treatments for Streptococcus suis, a bacteria...

The island of Hispaniola – the Dominican Republic and Haiti – has been posing a substantial risk for the spread of African Swine fever (ASF) to the North American mainland. Dr. Paul Sundberg, Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center, says that the key to the solution is maintaining biocontainment and bioexclusion.

• The USDA has been providing those countries with assistance, but there’s a long way to go until eradication is accomplished. In the meantime, managing the infection...

Any guesses on how the US hog industry has changed since the 90s? Recent research conducted by the USDA's Economic Research Service has an answer to that. Since that period:

• The overall number of farms has declined.
• The industry has moved to more specialized operations. 
• There’s been productivity growth, structural change, and expanded exports.  
• The percentage of hogs produced under contractual arrangements has grown.
• The number of independent operations has decreased.
• Exports have incr...