The quality of livestock can only be accurately judged once they have been slaughtered, which means that innovation to improve pig quality must involve measurements taken at the abattoir. In Scotland, pig carcasses are paid according to the weight and fatness of the carcass. This system of grading goes back to the 1960's when there was a focus on reducing pig backfat, and has been responsible for a huge shift towards lean carcasses. Unfortunately, the system has failed to give any indication of meat yield or quality, and may have indirectly led to reduced meat quality over time due to the breeding and rearing focus on a minimisation of backfat. The UK is one of the few developed countries who do not value the carcass on yield of meat in addition to backfat measures.
Scotland is fortunate to be supported by world class research facilities and an innovative technology sector. Recent Scottish breakthroughs in imaging technologies bring the opportunity to redefine carcass assessment, and to feed this information back to the industry to stimulate a new focus on genetic improvement to create the most efficient production of quality meat. This proposal creates a link between our academic technology experts, processors and producers to create a new focus on production which could lead the way in creating a more sustainable, efficient and consumer-focused industry. In addition to the new imaging technologies, Scottish data science has flourished over the past years. We have seen huge steps forward in the integration of technologies and machine learning / neural network data analytics and the Scottish Government has invested heavily in CENSIS and DataLab to encourage interaction between academics and industry. 

 

A new operational group will be formed involving two farmers cooperatives, a farmer owned processing company, the UK division of Europe's largest pork processor and a Scottish technology company. It will be led by Quality Pork Ltd, the medium-sized company that owns Brechin abattoir and which is a company limited by guarantee owned by 52 Scottish farmers.  QPL Brechin abattoir will be the hub for the project, it is supplied by almost every commercial scale pig producer in Scotland through two cooperatives, Scottish Pig Producers and Scotlean. A new project manager will be employed on site to take continual quality measurements and to facilitate the work of the specialists from Innovent, SPP, Scotlean and Tulip.

Tulip Ltd are the major customer for QPL Brechin and will be supplying feedback on the actual quality performance of the pigment and as part of the Danish Crown, Europe's largest pork processor, they are also aware of the technologies being trialled in other member states. Innovent Technology has data analysis and benchmarking systems that can be adapted to incorporated measures of saleable meat yield. A Quality Project Manager will be employed to measure saleable meat yield, pH and other quality measures on every carcase from the summer of 2017. Various existing measurement tools will be tested out for their ease of use at the high line speed that Brechin abattoir operates at. Innovent Technology will develop their qBox database to enable the new quality measure to be included and reported. From July 2018, routine carcase quality benchmarking will take place every quarter for SPP and Scotlean members. 

SOCIAL IMPACT
The pig sector is an important rural employer, with 500 people working directly on farms and another 950 working in a associated supporting roles. This is significantly lower, however, than historic employment and the Scottish Pig Meat Supply Chain Review commissioned by Scottish Government proposed that the optimum size for the industry would be 45,000 sows, an increase of 25% on current levels. The project proposed will play a major part in growing the industry, which could potentially provide another 363 jobs.

Pigmeat is already a cheap source of lean protein, an essential part of a healthy balanced diet and more accessible to those on lower incomes than alternatives such as lamb or salmon. This project will ensure that this continues into the future by increasing the yield of quality meat from each carcase produced.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
it takes more energy to deposit fat than lean tissue and for livestock, that energy is supplied through feed. Carbon footprinting measures the amount of inputs required to produce a unit of output and so selling leaner pigs will reduce the carbon footprint of Scottish pig production. 

Research undertaken within RESAS Theme 3: Land Use & Climate Change concluded that a major mitigation strategic for emissions from livestock production is to increase biological efficiency and bring about sustainable intensification. This project will increase the 'edible efficiency' of Scottish pigs by increasing the fraction of the animal that is actually eaten. At 56% on average, pigs have a much higher edible efficiency than beef (37%) or even fish (40%) but this can be pushed even further by increasing the proportion of protein to fat in the pig carcase through better grading techniques. 

This information will also be shared with QMS to feed into their existing knowledge transfer network, such as the Pig Monitor Farm, and also with Wholesome Pigs (Scotland) for integration into the "Innovative Use of Emerging Technologies to Improve Pig Production Efficiency" project (KTIF/007/2015).

In the later stages, other novel technologies will be tried out on site to judge their potential as the basis for a new method of grading and valuing Scottish pigs.

This project will focus producer attention on the performance of their end product in the eyes of both processors and consumers. Benchmarking will demonstrate what is possible and existing knowledge transfer and advisory networks will inform them of the on-farm actions that can improve quality. The ultimate aim is to improve the quality of Scottish Pork and provide genuine points of difference for the challenging post-Brexit marketplace.ECONOMIC IMPACT
Pigs contributed £94m to Scottish Agricultural Output in 2014, with a further £25m estimated value coming from primary processing. The successful implementation of this project should produce an approximate 1% increase in saleable meat yield from the existing Scottish herd, with a target of 2% in yield from legs & shoulders and a 1% increase in loin yield.

The increased profitability caused by better efficiency can reasonably be expected to drive an increase in the scale of production, particularly given the significant investments in processing capacity also underway. It is also likely that slaughter weights will increase, which drives processing efficiency too. 

This proposal brings advanced technology and data analytics directly into an industry where marginal gains made to efficiency can be the difference between success and failure. This proposal benefits from the unique Scottish supply chain where producers link to their own abattoir through cooperative marketing groups. The ability to exchange knowledge throughout that supply chain, and to create new production benchmarks focused on sustainable efficiency, meat yield, meat quality and animal health is unrivaled. SPP and Scotlean already operate benchmarking systems with their producers (see Appendix 2 for an example of the SPP Quarterly League Table) but these contain minimal quality measures, only fat depth (P2).

Financially, improved benchmarking of slaughter data - and in particular, the use of enhanced carcass measurements - had the potential to drive real financial value to the Scottish industry. Recent figures suggest that producers lose between £3 to £7 per pig when compared against optimum (see Appendix 3). Each £1 per pig improvement through enhanced management as a result of improved analysis is worth at least £1 million to the industry. For example, there can be a variation in loin yield of different cuts from of a pig of up to 20%, in other words, one pig could produce 20% more pork chops than the next one, even if the overall liveweight was identical. The on-farm factors that influence quality are well known in Scotland but there is currently no economic incentive for producers to invest resources to maximise quality. Routinely measuring quality is the first stage towards changing the entire payment structure to reward quality rather than quantity.