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ReferenceRE: When did PMWS first show up in the UK?

Nigel Cannings 18 October 2003 19:44

Originally from: Burkie
                        
Dear Pat: Way back in ancient days of college....even prior to that....a problem surfaced with our hogs, here in the USA.

We could grow and feed them to slaughter weights...and the performance improved with selection of better and better sires, many of those boars were sold at University testing stations, after having been "nominated" by purebred breeders to be tested for "performance." The goal was to find superior breeding stock to be used on sow herds at the commercial or even purebred level.

Many Universities developed these testing facilities, collected the performance data, and subsequently published the results in their catalogues for the Public to peruse. A sale date was scheduled and people poured into these sales, as "Grade and Yield" marketing of swine was becoming more and more popular. Grade and yield, paid a market premium for superior carcasses of hogs.

For any commercial producer of hogs, that meant a "premium" for slaughter hogs marketed....and I had some really good producers who adopted these practices when I was a buyer for Oscar Mayer & Co.

There was one problem that surfaced its ugly head around 1970.
A producer could load up his market hogs on a truck, and by the time they were delivered to a buying station, they were either dead or about to die.

You could hear these hogs undergoing this stress when the truck hit the buying yard. In those days, it was normal for a producer to follow a truck to the yard, watch his hogs scaled and tattoo-slapped, either receiving a bidded price (my bid) or sent to the plant to be killed on a "grade and yield" basis.

So, here came a load of say, 40 hogs, all finished, ready for sale into my facilities...only to have two or three that were in stress or dead or about to die.

At first, we didn't know what to do about this. But I learned a little "trick." A sharp knife whipped out of my pocket, three swipes later...slitted ears and no tail. The poor hogs had to bleed to remain alive. It was either that, or the PSS-Porcine Stress Syndrome would kill them before we could get them off the truck and onto a scale. That was important to Oscar Mayer, too. Once scaled, they became the property of Oscar Mayer...and us buyers were evaluated monthly on the basis of many factors, one of which was "death loss."

This really presented a buyer a dilemma. Do you work for your employer, or do you help your customer?

I tried to do both...because disposal of "deads," wasn't a lot of fun.

At first, my customers objected to me slitting their pigs ears and docking tails. But after they saw their animals alive...it became an accepted practice.

Now then, these hogs that exhibited these symptoms were some of the best-cutting hogs I ever bought. They were very lean, very good ham and yield...gret loin eye measurementd which made the Iowa Pork Chop famous. A two-inch thick chop, bar-b-qued, basted in beer as it was cooked......Yum, Yum. If you ever whole-hog roasted one of these pig carcasses, you probably had to baste it because of such a small amount of fat, as it was cooking.

But, were those roasted hogs ever great to eat!

Now then, as more time passed, PSE problems showed up at the abattoir on the meat from these carcasses. Everybody was concerned. "What's causing all this?"

PSE Pork.....Pale, Soft, exudative.

And it was getting worse.

In 1975, I operated a buying station in Illinois. The first thing my trucker told me, was who NOT to buy pigs from. They were "die – ers," he said. If you could keep them alive, they had great carcass cut-outs, based on measurement the company provided, but there were actually herds black-listed, because we couldn't get the darn pigs to the plant to kill. Either they died at the station, or in transit, or at the plant, before being killed.

All we had to really do to help solve these problems for our customers, was select boars and gilts that didn't exhibit these devastating genetic faults.

Each station had its own records of whom we did business with.
So we would talk to our producers and suggest making some changes.

That helped....everyone.

It seemed that the worst ones affected were using Yorkshire sows and Hampshire boars. It was in the mid-70's when the first Hybrid hogs started showing up. In some instances, that seemed to help...in others, it exacerbated the problem.

All in all, what I am trying to tell you is that PSS – Porcine Stress Syndrome has been here in the US for a very long time.

With the technology we have now, there should be no reason for it. Many advances have been made to identify carriers of these gene traits.....that, in my opinion, would be progress.

All the Best – sorry for rambling on so long.

Burkie in Kansas

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