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New printed farm handbook for organic pig producers

Media release

Cover

The ProPIG guide is robust enough to take it into the stable (Photo: Thomas Alföldi, FiBL)

Barbara Früh and Peter Haldemann

Barbara Früh of FiBL tested the new handbook with Peter Haldemann, a Swiss organic pig producer. (Photo: Thomas Alföldi, FiBL)

Newborn piglets

Newborn piglets have to be well observed. The handbook helps preventing problems and reacting if there is some (Photo: Thomas Alföldi, FiBL)

Pig in a muddy pool

Pigs like to wallow. It's one of the measures to prevent heat problems in summer (Photo: Thomas Alföldi, FiBL)

„Improving health and welfare of pigs“ is a new practical handbook for organic pig producers. The handbook summarizes the expertise of farmers, consultants, scientists and technical literature for maintaining the health of pigs.

(Frick, 24.8.2015) The new handbook was developed in the framework of the international project «ProPIG». It combines the expertise of 74 pig producers, together with input from advisors and scientists from eight European countries. The recommendations provide support to farmers and consultants in the development of an optimal pig husbandry. Through the use of simple checklists, the manual identifies possible causes and behavioural disorders for the major problem areas and suggests measures for their correction.

In the CoreOrganic II project ProPig, scientists and advisors evaluated health, wellbeing and husbandry conditions of pigs on the above mentioned 74 organic farms in eight European countries with differing housing systems, including free range, partly free range and indoor housing (with outdoor access).. Based on these assessments, improvement strategies were developed together with the pig farmers and compiled in this handbook.

Technical information

Holinger et al. (2015) Improving health and welfare of pigs. FiBL, INRA, Newcastle University (NU), Institute of Animal Science (IAS), BOKU.  First edition, handbook, 92 pages, language: English (also available in German, French and Czech), hardback. ISBN 978-3-03736-278-5.

How to get it

The handbook with the order number 1676 can be downloaded for free in our online shop or you can order a printed version for CHF/Euro 12. - at www.shop.fibl.org.

Video about the introduction

For the introduction of the handbook we have produced a video that shows how a Swiss pig producer is using „Improving health and welfare of pigs“ in his daily work. You can watch the movie at the FiBL-Youtube-Channel: www.youtube.com/user/FiBLFilm

Further information

Contact

Link

coreorganic2.org: Website of the CoreOrganic II project ProPIG

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