World meat industry news

Breeders of the Sibagro holding are afraid of a slight decline in pork production in Russia in the medium term, due to genetics, they propose to adopt a national breeding program, according to the corporate publication of the agricultural holding.

The issue of the need for joint work of breeders of various enterprises was discussed at the scientific and practical conference "Veterinary Medicine in the Agro-Industrial Complex - 2023", held in Novosibirsk. Experts note that the "feeding" of breeds from Western countries has ceased due to sanctions, which may lead to the impoverishment of Russian genetics.

"If we do not agree and do not find a way to preserve the genetic potential, within 3-5 years it is possible to reduce production volumes even at large enterprises due to a decrease in the genetic potential of animals. Everything will not collapse abruptly: we have enough animals to breed them without inbreeding (closely related crossbreeding)," Nadezhda Yudina, the chief livestock breeder of Sibagro, quotes the publication as saying.

According to her, breeding methods are probably not able to keep the genetic potential of the available animals, so work on local internal genetics must be started quickly. "You have to understand that a pig wants to become a wild boar all the time: go into the forest, grow slowly, give birth little, eat a lot ... Selection methods are needed to reliably select the best offspring in the right way," she stressed.

According to Sibagro, all major manufacturers are in a similar situation. In particular, during the conference, a representative of the Otrada Group of Companies (specializing in breeding and breeding pigs of Danish genetics) noted that in order to create a unified breeding program, it is necessary to approve a unified list of breeding traits, as well as the methodology for their calculation and specific economic weights. In case of cooperation of all participants of the program, its first results can be seen in the same 3-5 years.

"There is another point: we have a lot of sows in Russia, and it is impossible to combine them into a common database. In one" boiler "(common information and analytical system), as proposed, they cannot be mixed - the same breed can be called the same "But in different genetic companies, genetic markers of productivity can be located in different parts of the genome, and it will take many years to balance the population. But we saw this problem and united. We will all get together, discuss, recommend to the Ministry and NIIplem to select breed groups, find types breeds, genotype, divide into subtypes within the breed, involve science," Yudina said.

As a result of the conference, the experts approved a letter for the Union of Pig Breeders of Russia and the All-Russian Research Institute of Pedigree Business with proposals from the business community to solve the problems facing the industry.

In March 2022, with reference to the main beneficiary and chairman of the board of directors of Sibagro, Andrey Tyutyushev, it was reported that problems with genetics were not expected in the next year or two. "I know that our specialists are worried about genetics, because we originally imported our pigs from abroad. These worries are in vain. This year we have completely updated all our" first lines ". And we do not need to update them for another year or even two. During this time, I am sure we will work well with genetics ourselves," he noted, recalling that the holding has its own genetic center - in the Tyumen region.

Sibagro is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding founded in Tomsk in 2000. Unites 14 livestock and meat processing enterprises in the Urals, Siberian, Central and Far Eastern federal districts.