Improving Animal Health and Well-Being

The animal agriculture industry has worked diligently to improve animal health and well-being. One way that animal welfare can be assessed on a continuous basis by family farmers and ranchers throughout our supply chain is by health and performance metrics. Assessing performance and health indicators like average daily gain (ADG), mortality and reproduction rates provides the producer with data to assess the effectiveness of health and nutrition programs.

JBS USA Live Pork believes that average pigs weaned per sow, ADG, feed conversion and mortality are our best indicators of health and welfare. The Live Pork team sets aggressive annual targets to improve these metrics. Compared to 2017, we have continued to produce more weaned pigs per sow, with our contract sow partners producing on average 3.2 percent more pigs per sow. From 2017 to 2018, we improved our ADG by 2.3 percent and increased our adjusted feed conversion from weaning to market by 1.1 percent. More important, from 2017 to 2018, we reduced mortality in our wean to market hogs by 6.2 percent.