The CEO of the Canadian Center for Swine Improvement says, as new technologies designed to improve production efficiency become more widely adopted, they tend to become much more affordable.
As part of research conducted through Swine Innovation Porc, the Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement has evaluated emerging technologies being developed for the pork sector to track indicators of animal performance, welfare and carcass value and improve competitiveness.
Brian Sullivan, the CEO of the Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement, says the cost of new technologies vary a lot however, typically, a technology that’s widely adopted will tend to drop in price with more efficient production of devices and higher volumes.
For those of us who have a focus on genetics there are rapid developments happening with genomics technology. The application of genomics technologies requires that we have good quality measurements on a large number of animals for traits of interest. In other words measurement technologies are helping with the application of genomics technologies and all of this is helping the industry to remain competitive.
Ten years ago the first high density genetic marker panel for pigs cost about 100 dollars U.S. to test one pig. This was great development and it opened the door to research on application of genomics for more efficient genetic selection. Today we can get the same panel of genetic markers for less than 20 dollars. The result is that this technology, after 10 years of research and with the drop in price, is now widely used by genetic companies and breeders.
~ Brian Sullivan, Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement
Sullivan acknowledges the U.S. and Europe an others are not standing still when it comes to the adoption of new technologies so ongoing investment in Canada is critical for the industry to remain competitive.
