Environmental impacts and their association with performance and excretion traits in growing pigs

Alessandra Monteiro (1) , Ludovic Brossard (1) , Hélène Gilbert (2) , Jean-Yves Dourmad (1)

1 PEGASE - Physiologie, Environnement et Génétique pour l'Animal et les Systèmes d'Elevage [Rennes]
2 GenPhySE - Génétique Physiologie et Systèmes d'Elevage

The selection of animals for improved production traits has been, for a long time, the major driver of pig breeding. More recently, because of the increasing concern with environment, new selection criteria have been explored, such as nitrogen (N) excretion which is related to both feed efficiency and environmental impact. However, many studies indicate that life cycle assessment (LCA) provides much better indicators of environmental impacts. In this context, the objective of this study was to investigate, using a modelling approach, the relationships between production traits and LCA impacts of individual growing pigs. The LCA considered the process of pig fattening, including production and transport of feed ingredients and complete feeds, the raising of pigs, and manure management. Impacts were calculated at farm gate and the functional unit was one kg of body weight gain over fattening. Performances of pigs were simulated for two feeding programs, 2-phases and precision feeding, using InraPorc population model (2,000 pigs per scenario) and considering between-animal variability. The LCA calculations were performed for each pig according to its own performance and N excretion. The CORR procedure (SAS version 9.2) was used to investigate the correlations between LCA impacts and performance and excretion traits. The results indicated that N excretion was positively correlated with feed conversion ratio (FCR; r=+0.94), climate change (CC; r=+0.94), acidification potential (AC; r=+0.96), and eutrophication potential (EU; r=+0.96), whatever the feeding program. Surprisingly, FCR appeared the best indicator of LCA impacts with a very high and positive correlation (r>+0.99) with CC, AC, and EU for both feeding programs. Despite the lower CC, AC, and EU of pig production in a precision feeding program (3, 16 and 11% lower than the 2-phases, respectively), the correlation within each outcome were very similar. It was concluded that the use of FCR as a selection criterion in pig breeding is the most effective way to associate improved performance and low environmental impact of pig fattening.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Alessandra Monteiro, Ludovic Brossard, Hélène Gilbert, Jean-Yves Dourmad. Environmental impacts and their association with performance and excretion traits in growing pigs. 70. Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP), Aug 2019, Gand, Belgium. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Annual Meeting of the European Association for Animal Production, 25, 2019, Annual Meeting of the European Association for Animal Production. ⟨hal-02282321⟩