This project analyses the production costs of both entire males, and immunocastrated males for a better understanding of the potential benefits and setbacks of immunocastration.
Through understanding the associated costs of males both whole and immunocastrated, producers can make an informed decision for their farms.
Value for producers:
- Informs decision making in regards to immunocastrating males
- Increases understanding of the costs involved, to potentially reduce farm production costs.
Recommendations:
- The quicker IC is fully adopted, the better the investment in IC for the Australian pork industry. The best case is the cost to producers of IC is $0.10/kg pork produced. This requires only 0.5 percent of pork consumption to be retained due to lower incidence of bad smell or taste due to the elimination of boar taint in 100% of the national herd.
- If adoption is slow, and low, reaching only 60 percent of the potential adopting population- the producers of the remaining 20 percent of pork produced not using IC and the benefits and costs do not accrue linearly, then demand needs to increase (or the loss of demand avoided) to 1.5 percent to make an investment in IC worthwhile.
- If between 0.5 and 1.5 percent more of the pork sold each year over 10 years did not end up as a failed product and gave a good eating experience, the investment pays off from an industry perspective. This means that if between 5 percent and 15 percent of the total annual failed product due to bad smell/taste is transformed into an acceptable eating product due to not having boar taint by using IC, the investment is a good one.
