Devenish Nutrition and Queen’s University, Belfast

SAC Consultancy employed the power and efficiency of Agrecalc to calculate critical environmental indicators, such as the greenhouse gases (GHGs). Plus, an additional tailor-made module was created to assess the ammonia emissions.

Addressing the environmental impact of vaccine use

Devenish Nutrition is a multinational livestock nutrition company providing a range of speciality products and innovative solutions. Devenish Nutrition has a manufacturing capacity across three  production sites, which sell and deliver to over 40 countries worldwide.
Queen’s University Belfast is a world-class education and student experience institution. Situated in Belfast, it is the United Kingdom’s ninth oldest university, while their alumni list comprises of Nobel Prize winners, such as Seamus Heaney and David Trimble.
Queen’s University Belfast and Devenish Nutrition teamed up to upscale their research in porcine circovirus 2 (PCV-2), a very damaging virus for the pig-producing industry distributed worldwide and has been identified as the essential infectious cause for the associated post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) and porcine circovirus associated diseases (PCVADs).
The task of assessing the impact that PMWS / PCVADs and PCV-2 vaccine use has on the environmental effects of pig production was commissioned to SAC Consultancy. 

food industry researcher

"Overall production efficiency for the rearing and finishing system was highest in Trial 3: No Disease where Feed Conversion Efficiency (FCR) (total feed use / total net pig-meat live-weight produced) was 9.5% better than Trial 2 Sub Clinical, and 14.4% better than Trial 1 Clinical. As all three trial were fed the same diet this difference is due to better growth rates and lower mortality in the No Disease Trial."

Agrecalc calculates critical environmental indicators

SAC Consultancy employed the power and efficiency of Agrecalc to calculate critical environmental indicators, such as the greenhouse gases (GHGs). Plus, an additional tailor-made module was made available to assess the ammonia emissions.
Agrecalc proved to be easy-to-use and accurately calculated that the trial with disease-free animals (No Disease) had the lowest carbon emissions per unit of output with the PWMS affected trials found to have emissions between 2% (Sub-Clinical) and 10% (Clinical) higher on a live-weight basis.
Next, Agrecalc was set to include ammonia into the impact assessment, with results revealing even lower absolute and relative emissions on a unit of output basis for the trial containing the disease-free animals (No Disease) trial with the PWMS/PCVAD-affected trials having emissions between 13% (Sub Clinical) and 25% (Clinical) higher on a live-weight basis.
Agrecalc produced meaningful research results that were driven by animals’ greater feed conversion efficiency (FCR) due to higher daily live-weight gain (DLWG) and lower mortality.

Access the full ‘Environmental impact comparison of Post Weaning Mortality Syndrome trials’ via the link.

Agrecalc will continue to support the research into emissions and assessing mitigation solutions. If you’d like to know more about how Agrecalc can help your research efforts, please get in touch with our team.

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