The European Food Safety Authority has published the first of several scientific opinions yet to come with detailed suggestions on how to improve the welfare of all categories of farmed pigs kept in the most suboptimal husbandry systems used in the European Union. 

• The opinions were requested by the European Commission as a key component of its Farm to Fork strategy, and aim to answer problems raised by the European Citizens' Initiative "End the Cage Age."

A total of 16 welfare consequence...

Remember the oversupply crisis in Russia we talked about in a previous edition? (You can read about it here.) Well, it’s getting worse – 250,000 additional tonnes of pork are expected to land on the domestic market this year, according to Yuri Kovalev, chairman of the Russian Union of pork producers.

• Mr. Kovalev says the country is likely to increase domestic production by 200,000 tonnes this year. Plus, an additional 50,000 tonnes are projected to land on the domestic market due to a slump i...

Global prices for meat continue to rise, which brings opportunities to teach consumers how to replace ingredients in traditional dishes with economically priced pork cuts and variety meats.

• The U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) is hosting programs and workshops for distributors, as well as retail and foodservice vendors in key export markets to teach them new ways to offer alternatives to consumers.
• Workshops in Mexico, Central America, and Japan promote alternative dishes and cuisine prac...

It looks like pork and it tastes like pork… but is it really pork? The first-ever "marbled cultivated pork loin" has been produced. Yes, you read that right! Novel Farms, Inc. – a food technology startup based in Berkeley, California – has announced it has created a cultivated pork loin that displays the marbling and mouthfeel of a real muscle cut.

• Most cultivated meat companies focus on making sausages or burgers – but the real challenge is mimicking conventional cuts like beef and pork, and...

Several studies have shown that feeding increased lysine soon after a health challenge can improve performance and help mitigate the negative effects associated with the infection, but how long after infection will those high lysine diets still be effective? In this episode, I talk with Kayla Miller about 2 studies she performed testing different nutritional strategies for poor health pigs, including a delayed feeding of a high lysine diet to PRRSV infected pigs.

Meet the guest: Kayla Mi...

We’ve seen several studies on gastric ulcers being influenced by either feed outages or by particle size, but we still don’t know the exact physiological mechanism that causes the onset of these gastric ulcers. In this episode, I talk with Agbee Kpogo about his work continuing the research on gastric ulcers to further understand the mechanisms behind this animal welfare concern.

Meet the guest: 

Agbee Kpogo originally gew up in Ghana where he obtained his B.S. in Animal Sciences. After ...

Have you ever imagined that pigs could heal a person's eyesight? Even though they can’t be eye doctors, they can still give a hand – or a cornea. Researchers and entrepreneurs in Sweden have developed a cornea implant made of collagen protein from the skin of pigs. It has been used to restore the sight of 20 people with diseased corneas, most of whom were blind prior to receiving the implant.

• It is hoped that the results can help those suffering from corneal blindness and low vision by provid...