Entire male pig production in Europe

Abstract

In Europe the proportion of male pigs that are left ‘entire’ has been high for many years in the British Isles and Iberian Peninsula, and has recently increased in The Netherlands and to a lesser extent in Germany and France. Various European Union partners agreed in 2010 on a road map to abandon piglet castration by 1 January 2018. Despite significant commercial in-confidence research on instrumental methods for detecting boar-tainted carcasses at slaughter plants, nothing is currently being adopted at an industrial scale. A few abattoirs sort out the most heavily tainted carcasses, using human nose methods. However, there are major concerns with their accuracy, which is currently not documented in any publicly available technical report. The importance of androstenone and skatole for boar taint is still debated but a recent study (CAMPIG; G Backus, H Snoek, MA Oliver, M Font i Furnols, M Aluwé, F Tuyttens, M Bonneau, P Chevillon, MD Aaslyng, D Moerlein, L Meier-Dinkel, J Trautmann, J-E Haugen, unpubl. data) has established preliminary equations relating consumer dissatisfaction to androstenone and skatole levels. These equations still need further consolidation to integrate the impact of very high and very low androstenone levels on consumer acceptability. Reducing the incidence of boar taint at a production level and at the same time overcoming possible greater aggressive behaviour of entire male pigs are also critical for abandoning castration. Genetic selection is the most efficient way to reduce androstenone, but the selection of boar-taint-free genetic lines without any adverse consequence on the reproductive and growth performance will take time. Skatole levels can be efficiently reduced via feeding specific feedstuffs and good control of the animals’ environment. Provided that the incidence of boar taint can be reduced to an acceptable level and the residual tainted carcasses can be sorted out at a reasonable price by mutually recognised methods, the abandonment of castration will result in high benefits, up to one-billion euros for both the pork industry, via a drastic reduction of production costs, and society at large, through improved animal welfare and reduced impact on the environment.