The focus on efficiency also helps improve animal welfare
As origin stories go, this is a strange one. Who would have thought that six farmers meeting up in an English pub in the 1950s would have helped to improve the carbon footprint of 21st century pigs?
It might not have been part of those farmers’ original goal – they simply wanted to use science to improve pig breeding. But it turns out that the application of science is playing a pivotal role in creating credible, measurable carbon reductions in the pork industry. “If we can select more robust, healthy, efficient animals, ultimately we can translate that to improvements in sustainability” says Matt Culbertson, the current chief operating officer of the Pig Improvement Company (PIC), which officially came into being in the White Hart pub in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire in 1962.
PIC’s business and research have led to the breeding of pigs that not only lower the carbon emissions in the meat supply chain, but carry the first externally-verified measure of the role of genetics in sustainability. Advances in technology, improved computing power, statistical methodology and genetics enable breeders to select animals with the ideal characteristics to be parents of the next generation, and the benefits are accruing for the planet, as well as the consumer.
Lower Emissions
The livestock sector alone accounts for around 14.5 per cent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). This is why governments and corporations around the world have begun mandating that suppliers of farmed products keep account of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the food they sell to consumers, with an aim to lower those emissions.
Measuring and lowering greenhouse gas emissions from farm to plate is a difficult task. But breeding seems to be the best place to start: last year, the FAO identified improved genetics as the number one path towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with livestock farming.
Because PIC has been seeking to breed ever-healthier pigs for more than 60 years, the company was already in a position to spearhead this approach. The reality of farming is that animals that get sick addto the amount of water, feed and land the herd requires, which translates into a higher carbon footprint per kg of meat on the high street.
Put simply, healthier animals have lower carbon footprints. “Most of it is around feed conversion,” Baker says. “At a basic level, healthier animals convert inputs and resources more efficiently.”
Over the last few decades, the company’s breeding innovations have improved the feed-to-pork conversion efficiency by close to 30 per cent. The end result is animals that are more robust, that grow faster and leaner, with less wastage. “As we’ve evolved animals over time towards those targets, they become more biologically efficient,” Culbertson says.
Culbertson – who was born and raised on an Illinois swine farm, worked in the industry for decades and has a PhD in swine genetics – says much of that is down to better breeding through genetics research. “Over the last couple of decades, we’ve been able to utilise genomic science to get specific readings of the DNA of animals and look for relationships between specific genes and the characteristics that those animals possess,” he says.
And that has translated into measurable and provable carbon savings. PIC has now quantified that its genetics achieve a 7.7 per cent reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a pig’s full life cycle compared against the European industry average. This reduced greenhouse gas emissions, or “genetic carbon”, as the company calls it, is no greenwashing: the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) has validated PIC’s life-cycle analysis with full conformance, meaning that it provably follows internationally-agreed standards for accurately reporting the carbon footprint of a product.
What’s more, the research behind the innovation has been published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Animals. “It’s the first peer reviewed, ISO-conformed life-cycle analysis of livestock genetics that we are aware of,” says Banks Baker, global director of product sustainability for PIC.
Huge Gains
Not that the scientists are resting on their laurels. “The 7.7 per cent number was our 2021 improvement,” Baker says. “We also modelled out what our genetics are going to provide going into 2030, and we’re getting better by about 0.6 per cent each year.” When pork represents more than one-third of the global meat supply, that’s a huge gain.
This is a gain for the whole industry, too. PIC’s ISO conformance means that these carbon savings can feed into the footprint calculations for all stakeholders in the supply chain. The company is currently working with the US National Pork Board and North American Meat Institute to explore how best to implement this in practice.
Measurably lower carbon footprints not only can help suppliers meet their sustainability targets but also the demands of environmentally-aware consumers. “Consumer awareness and demand for goods which have been produced using lower carbon methods is growing,” says Lily Spencer-Brown, Livestock Technical Development Manager at meat supplier Woodhead Bros, which is owned by the supermarket chain Morrisons.
And PIC’s ISO conformance matters for both suppliers and consumers. “It gives the industry confidence in carbon reduction claims,” Spencer-Brown says.
Sustainability is great for animal welfare too: the whole aim is to raise healthy pigs, after all. In fact, PIC’s scientists look out for antagonistic relationships between, say, leanness and health, so that the animal is not optimised for meat production over wellbeing. “We keep all of those things balanced so that the end result is positive for the pig,” says Culbertson.
“What’s exciting about the genetics approach is that we’re providing a production efficiency that starts at the farm level,” said Baker. “The farmer is simply more efficient and so it won’t necessarily have a higher cost.”
Spencer-Brown agrees it’s an impactful solution that could work for everyone involved, helping to put sustainability at the centre of the industry. “It could have the potential to reduce carbon footprint without changes to infrastructure or current management practices whilst ensuring welfare is improved,” she says.
While there is still a long way to go in mitigating agriculture’s contributions to greenhouse-gas emissions, PIC’s innovations are a good start, and could have domino effects across the whole industry. “I think that the groundwork that we’re laying in pork right now will hopefully eventually be applicable for other animal species and maybe even crops,” Baker says.
Culbertson agrees and is delighted that the company’s founding philosophy is still driving its success. “Those farmers believed that science could help accelerate progress – just as we do today,” he says.
Find out more at: www.pic.com
