August 16, 2008

US soy, pork checkoffs continue partnership

The United Soybean Board (USB) will continue its partnership with the pork checkoff on mutually beneficial research despite the challenges of high feed costs.

As soymeal prices move upwards, it has become increasingly important for livestock producers to extract all available nutrition from their soymeal.

Livestock consumes 98 percent of US soymeal used domestically, with the US pork industry using about 25 percent of domestically used soymeal, according to Phil Bradshaw, USB Animal Agriculture Team Lead.

The partnership has given birth to the North American Swine Energy System, a two-year research programme evaluating the use of net-energy systems for US feedstuff, as well as the three-year project "Development of an Allergenicity Model in Swine". The first project will conclude in August while the second is set to conclude next May.