Page 27 - CON Boardpack FEBRUARY 2020 FINAL (v5) P1 - 75_Neat

RESEARCH

Bursaries

The last of the outstanding PORCUS articles were received from previous
bursary holders.

Three new contracts have been signed for research project funding. Two of
these are partial funding along with other funders, one at the ARC
Onderstepoort on ASF prevalence in Gauteng, and one at the veterinary
faculty at Onderstepoort on “The prevalence, perceptions and mitigation of
antimicrobial resistance in pig farms of Gauteng province and surroundings in
South Africa”. The third contract is with the University of Stellenbosch titled
“Improving the livelihood of pig farmers of commages in rural areas of Western
Cape”.

Committee Members

Professor Esté van Marle-Köster joined the Research Committee during the
year while Mr Arthur Gee retired from the Committee after many years of
valuable service.

Carcass Classification

Much of the Committee’s attention was again focussed on the Carcass
Classification project. The final report on the project conducted by Drs Phillip
Strydom and Michelle Hope-Jones was submitted in November as promised.
The results are based on dissection data of 120 pig carcasses of varying
fatness, weights and genders representative of the main breeds currently
produced in South Africa.
• According to the EU regulations the accuracy of the prediction
formulas is determined by a term called RMSEP which must be below
2.5. This allows for a plus or minus deviation of 2.5% in the predicted
lean within a class and dictates that the intervals between classes
should be 5%. For this reason, a new class division like that of the
SEUROP system, is proposed:

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