Towards an industry-wide, multilevel evaluation framework for pig meat inspection: potential applications and...

Area of Science:

• Veterinary epidemiology
• Agricultural data science
• Animal health monitoring

Background:

• Meat inspection (MI) data offers insights into livestock health and welfare, crucial for farm sustainability and productivity.
• Limitations exist in MI data quality and harmonization across slaughterhouses, hindering its full potential.
• Digitalization presents opportunities to improve MI data collection and utilization for livestock farmers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a cross-slaughterhouse ranking system for farmers utilizing meat inspection data.
• To investigate the application of digital tools, like Qualifood®, for enhanced MI data collection and feedback.
• To establish a statistical model for assessing pig respiratory health using MI data from multiple slaughterhouses.

Main Methods:

• Utilized 5 years (2020-2024) of meat inspection data exported from the Qualifood® database.
• Focused analysis on pig data, specifically the 'respiratory health' category, as a case study.
• Employed generalized linear mixed models to calculate annual reference values (basic risk) for respiratory health findings and estimated variability of random effects.

Main Results:

• The basic risk for pig respiratory health findings showed a gradual decline from 14.4% in 2020 to approximately 12.0% in 2024.
• Variability analysis indicated stable farm and delivery level standard deviations (SDs), but substantially higher slaughterhouse-level SDs in the full dataset, highlighting heterogeneity.
• Relative risk (risk ratio) was used to compare farmer-specific risks against the basic risk for cross-slaughterhouse evaluation.

Conclusions:

• Digital advancements enable cross-slaughterhouse evaluation of MI data, emphasizing the need for standardized, region-wide digital data collection.
• The developed model addresses inconsistencies in recording quality, supporting data-driven decisions for farmers and authorities.
• This approach enhances animal health and welfare management and reinforces the agricultural value chain.