Innovative strategies for managing swine welfare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iowa

Abstract

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization and its impact on animal agriculture in the United States was undeniable. By April, COVID-19 resulted in the simultaneous closure or reduced operations of many meat processing plants in the upper Midwest, leading to supply chain disruptions. In Iowa, the leading pork production and processing state, these disruptions caused producer uncertainty, confusion, and stress, including time-sensitive challenges for maintaining animal care. The Iowa Resource Coordination Center (IRCC) was quickly created and launched from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS). The IRCC included public representation from the Iowa Pork Producers Association (IPPA), Iowa Pork Industry Center (IPIC), and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, and private partners including producers, veterinarians, and technical specialists. Supporting swine welfare, the IRCC provided information on management strategies, dietary alterations to slow pig growth, alternative markets, on-farm euthanasia, and mass depopulation under veterinary oversight. In a crisis, Iowa created a model that reacted to producers’ pragmatic, mental and emotional needs. This model could be quickly replicated with an introduction of a foreign animal disease.

Strategies to manage barn feed supply to prolong and hold late finishing pigs during a supply chain disruption

“…As a result, supply chain disruptions can greatly impact pig producers and pork consumers. In recent years, this supply chain has faced the threat of FAD ( Blome et al, 2020 ), cyber-attacks ( Creswell et al, 2021 ), and global pandemics such as COVID-19 ( Johnson et al, 2021 ), all of which have imposed disruptions to the efficiency of pork production. In the case of a potential FAD outbreak in the U.S., a National Movement Standstill policy ( USDA, 2020 ) will likely go into effect prohibiting commercial truck movement between pig sites within the impacted region for at least 72 h. This inability of commercial truck access to barns may significantly impact feed deliveries and pig marketing, forcing producers to manage what feed is available on-hand and slow pig growth.…”

“…For instance, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, U.S. hog processing facilities were faced with labor shortages, leading to the inability to operate at full capacity ( Hahn, 2020 ). This forced producers to alter pig production practices by reducing sow breeding ( Wang et al, 2020 ), holding pig growth rates with diet adjustment ( Helm et al 2021a , 2021b ), or mass culling and euthanasia ( Meyer, 2020 ) of pigs that could not be marketed ( Johnson et al, 2021 ). Further, supply chain vulnerability was highlighted in the summer of 2021, when one of the largest meat processors faced a cyber-attack and extortion threat that forced production to a halt ( Creswell et al, 2021 ).…”

The Rise of Heatstroke as a Method of Depopulating Pigs and Poultry: Implications for the US Veterinary Profession

“…This led to over-crowding on farms and strained supply and demand linkages, ultimately resulting in mass killing of large numbers of pigs and chickens, usually on-farm [1,42]. Animal welfare concerns secondary to overcrowding and feed shortages were cited as key justification for these depopulations, however, economic factors also played a role, as feed requirements increased and animals grew too large to be slaughtered at the processing plants typically used [1, 40,[42][43][44][45].…”