CALGARY – The Alberta pork industry has a new research centre without walls or windows.
Having no physical structure may be the best way to get hog producers, scientists and packers working together in the newly formed Alberta Pork Research Centre.
The four participants, Alberta Agriculture, Alberta Pork Producers Development Corporation, the University of Alberta and Agriculture Canada at Lacombe joined in the effort this fall.
Their main goal is to deliver new technology useful to pork producers.
The centre, an umbrella term for the group, plans to use facilities already available, like the Lacombe Research Centre to investigate meat quality, and the Sinclair Swine Research Unit at the University of Alberta to study reproduction and swine management, said Ed Schultz.
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“It’s a concept. It’s not bricks and mortar,” said Schultz, manager of the pork producers development corporation.
A forage research centre also started this year using the same concept.
The pork centre has been in the works for about two years and the final agreement came through in September.
Participants hope the diverse research group will interest graduate students who want to work in the pork industry.
“It’s going to be an important facility for the training of undergraduate and graduate students, many of who when they graduate, go to work for the industry,” said Schultz.
The overall coordinator is swine specialist George Foxcroft at the U of A. Further guidance will come from a 12 member board of university researchers, including the dean of agriculture, government swine specialists and two hog producers.
The three main areas of research cover meat safety and quality pork issues, nutrition in the early growing pig along with reproduction of breeding animals.
Long-term commitment
The pork producers and Alberta Agriculture have each committed $100,000 a year over the long term toward the centre. The pork producers have provided another $75,000 a year to the U of A to help maintain two pork research chairs.
The pork producers support research through a levy paid on every hog marketed in the province. A total checkoff of $1.25 is deducted at each sale with 20 cents earmarked for research. Last year the producers devoted $444,923 to research.
Until two years ago, the pork producers only gave 10 cents a head but a motion from farmers requested a larger financial commitment to research.
