Tag: pigs

OM in the News: The High-Tech Chinese Pig Farm

One Chinese firm uses video to capture pig faces because they move a lot.

The new Chinese pig farm: A database of every pig’s face; Voice scans that detect hogs with a cough: Robots that dispense just the right amount of feed. “Chinese companies are pushing facial and voice recognition and other advanced technologies as ways to protect the country’s pigs,” writes The New York Times (Feb. 25, 2019). In this Year of the Pig, many Chinese hogs are dying from a deadly swine disease, threatening the country’s supply of pork, a staple of Chinese dinner tables. China has already culled a million pigs (out of a population of 400 million), set up roadblocks and built fences, to no avail.

There’s a lot at stake. China is the world’s largest pig breeder and its largest pork consumer. The meat is so important that China has its own strategic pork reserve. With 10’s of millions of pig farms, the Chinese government has endorsed technology on the farm. Its most recent 5-year plan calls for increased use of robotics and network technology, saying it wants to promote “intelligent farming.” Officials praised “raising pigs in a smart way” using the A-B-C-Ds: artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and data technology.

Technology companies say they can help farmers isolate disease carriers, reduce the cost of feed, increase fertility, and reduce unnatural deaths. JD.com’s system uses robots to feed pigs the correct amount of food depending on the animals’ stage of growth. SmartAHC uses A.I. to monitors pigs’ vital statistics, and hooks up sows with wearable monitors that can predict ovulation time.

Chinese are quick to embrace high-tech solutions to just about any problem. A digital revolution has transformed China into a place where nearly anything can be summoned with a smartphone. Facial recognition has been deployed in public bathrooms to dispense toilet paper, in train stations to apprehend criminals, and in housing complexes to open doors.

Classroom discussion questions:
1. Why will this high-tech approach be difficult to implement?

2. What technology is used in American farming?

 

OM in the News: Clustering Technology and the Danish Pig

hogsEvery weekday 20,000 pigs are delivered to the Danish Crown company’s slaughterhouse in central Denmark, writes The Economist (Jan.4, 2014). They trot into the stunning room, guided by workers armed with giant fly swats. They are hung upside down, divided in two, shaved of their bristles and scalded clean. A machine cuts them into pieces, which are then cooled, boned and packed.

The slaughterhouse is enormous, ten football fields long with 7 miles of conveyor belts. Its managers attend to the tiniest detail. The fly-swatting workers wear green rather than white because this puts the pigs in a better mood. The cutting machine photographs a carcass before adjusting its blades to its exact contours. The company calibrates not only how to carve the flesh, but also where the various parts will fetch the highest prices.

Denmark is a tiny country, with 5.6 million people and wallet-draining labor costs. But it is an agricultural giant, home to 30 million pigs and numerous global brands. In 2011, farm products made up 20% of its goods exports. The value of food exports grew from $5.5 billion in 2001 to $22 billion in 2011. The government expects it to rise by a further $9 billion by 2020.

Why, in a post-industrial economy, is the food industry still thriving? Much of the answer lies in a cluster in the central region of the country. The cluster includes several big companies, which act as its leading investors: Danish Crown, Arla, Rose Poultry and DuPont Danisco.  Plenty of smaller firms are also sprouting, which act as indicators of nascent trends and incubators of new ideas. Interestingly, among the Danish public, distaste for “factory farming” is increasing. Borgen, a popular television political drama, devoted an entire episode to criticizing pig farming.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why is clustering so important (see Chapter 8)?

2. How is technology impacting the food processing industry?

Teaching Tip: Pigs and Operations Management Ethics

 The Ethical Dilemmas at the end of each of our 17 chapters are a popular feature that many OM instructors assign as homework or use for lively class discussions. Some colleges, such as Benedictine University,  view ethics as an important part of their OM curriculum (as noted in their linked syllabus).  If you look over the Ethical Dilemma in Chapter 7, which deals with the trade-off between increased productivity/ lower costs of pork vs. the comfort of the pigs, you will appreciate the article in the New York Times (Oct.6, 2012) on this very sensitive subject.

The article opens: “Sow 44733 had broken the shoulder of one of her pen mates, rousted another who was huddled in the corner and was chewing on the ear of a third. Other sows in the pen sported abrasions, torn ears and bloody tail stumps. It was that kind of behavior that led hog farmers like Tom Dittmer to isolate sows in individual stalls called gestation crates that are barely bigger than the pigs themselves.”

“The reason the industry switched to crates wasn’t because we wanted to harm our animals,” Mr. Dittmer said. “We did it because we thought it was what was best for the animals.” The move also kept the price of pork reasonably low for consumers, he said.

Now, hog farmers are under increasing pressure from corporate pork buyers and animal rights groups to return to the old way of doing things: putting sows in group housing. In September alone, three companies — Dunkin’ Donuts, ConAgra Foods and Brinker (Chili’s) — announced that they would no longer buy pork derived from pigs housed in gestation crates. Farmers resent the tactics, saying they worry that the move will be unsustainably costly for them and result in soaring pork prices for consumers.

Research is mixed about which type of housing is best for the animals’ welfare, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Want to ask your students what they think?