David J. Meisinger US Pork Center of Excellence

Publish Date: March 25, 2010

An essential part of designing a sound feeding strategy involves making decisions on how to best provide the energy and nutrients (amino acids, vitamins and minerals) that pigs need in their diet. Pork producers have many options to provide nutrients to their pigs, with varying levels of cost, labor and feasibility involved with each method.

Publish Date: June 6, 2006

The National Pork Board has given a lot of attention to fresh pork quality over the past seven or eight years. Their Pork Quality Solutions Team is comprised of representatives from production, genetics, packing, academia, and government. Through their guidance and oversight, checkoff funds have been devoted to research, education and technology transfer. Many of these efforts have been targeted towards producers and packers. A great deal of effort has been applied to genetics, nutrition and handling of hogs on farms. Likewise, there have been many research projects, workshops, facts sheets, and modules developed to help the packing industry understand the importance of what they do and how it affects pork quality. But in this entire process, it became readily apparent that little or no attention had been paid to those transporting our nations hogs.