Animal care and health

Australian Pork Limited (APL), the national representative body of Australian pork producers, provides farmers with information on animal care issues to ensure the food they produce meets the highest animal welfare, health and food safety standards.

Stockmanship
It is recognised internationally that the most important factor for ensuring good animal welfare is stockmanship. APL believes this is a critically important part in the process of producing pigs and without proper training the process is compromised.

All stockpeople working with pigs are required under state government regulations to be competent to maintain the health and welfare of the animals in their care (or under the direct supervision of a competent stockperson). Stockpeople are expected to have either completed training units in, or completed a recognition of prior learning process, in the following areas:

• Move and handle pigs
• Care for health and welfare of pigs
• Observe enterprise quality assurance procedures OR Comply with industry quality assurance requirements [nb: choice here depends on enterprise requirements.]
• Comply with animal industry welfare requirements
• Contribute to OHS processes.
• Administer medication to animals
• Implement animal health control programs
• Euthanase Livestock (optional, however at least one person on each farm must hold this unit)

Supervisors are expected to have a Certificate 3 in Pork Production. Stockmanship and handling is central to training programs that APL has developed and has been running throughout the country over many years. APL will continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in running and expanding these programs to ensure that our industry is skilled in the care of our animals.

Elective Husbandry Procedures
Castration
Australia is one of the few countries that does not routinely castrate all male pigs. IN some situations, castration is a nessecery management practice for production to meet the consumer requirements. Castration prevents the development of a number of undesireable flavour and odour characteristics of the meat that are rejected by consumers. New technologies are enabling farmers to avoid physical castration in some situations through the use of a vaccination against boar taint. Pigs that are not castrated are sent to market before they reach sexual maturity.

Ear notching
Ear notching is one of a number of methods utilised for the identification of pigs and as such is a nessecery component of of farm management. It enables a producer to quickly identify the pig to monitor its growth rate. Livestock identification is also important to enable livestock to be traced if there is a disease outbreak - providing further assurance to our food quality.

Teeth clipping
Teeth clipping is a practice to prevent injury to litter mates and udders of nursing sows.