The highlight of day two at World Pork Expo is the carving of the roasted hogs and there were four this year. We already saw Elvis Pigsly in the last post – here is the Novus International feast.
The hogs are roasted for almost 24 hours before they are carved up and offered for passers-by to enjoy, with a nice variety of sauces. Everyone at the expo looks forward to roasted hogs coming out at the end of a long day. Not many vegans here at WPX!
Doing the carving honors are Randy Anderson and Felipe Navarro of Novus. I interviewed both of them earlier in the day about what Novus has to offer for pork producers around the world.
Randy is National Sales Manager for Novus’ pork business in North America. He says they have expanded their product line in the past several years. “What we really focus on is gut health of the animal, how can we help get more out of the nutrition we are feeding them and bring more efficiency,” he says. Among the products they offer are Activate, which are part of their organic acid line, and Mintrex, a cost effective source of organic trace minerals.
Listen to or download my interview with Randy here: Randy Anderson
Felipe talked about supporting pork marketing on a global scale. “We have been improving the way we position our programs based on ROI, trying to bring better value to producers, reducing the cost of production so they get better efficiency,” Felipe said. Novus services producers in more than 80 countries and have offices in six of them.
Listen to or download my interview with Felipe here: Felipe Navarro
World Pork Expo 09 Photo Album
AgWired coverage of World Pork Expo made possible by Novus International and Boehringer Ingelheim
Everyday, people utilize countless accounts: email, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to communicate with others, and the list of these social networking sites is constantly growing. However, there is much more to social networking than simply having an account. How can we have meaningful connections online? How can we better reach our target audience? Here is a paper by 
The food is fine and the weather couldn’t be better at World Pork Expo this year.
Even the food that isn’t pork here at the expo still has a piggish theme – like these cool cookies at the Boehringer Ingelheim tent. Gotta love it!
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, better knows as PRRS, costs the U.S. swine industry about $560 million a year, so eradicating that disease could have a significant impact for producers. Dr. Scott Dee with the Swine Disease Eradication Center at the University of Minnesota believes it is possible within 20 years.
He outlined several PRRS-control strategies that he believes show great promise for eradicating the disease. Among them, air filtration systems to control aerosol transmission of the virus, modified live vaccines used in an infected population to reduce spread of the virus within the herd, and oral fluid diagnostic sampling that he expects to completely replace blood sampling. 
PETA plans to have billboards in the Wichita area that promote vegetarianism, prompted by abortion Dr. George Tiller’s murder. The group hopes that the billboards will help pro-life and pro-choice advocates find common ground in support for animal rights.
Iron is powerful and now Farm Progress Companies have PowerIron.
Hundreds of people showed up today to tour the new 
After his remarks, Governor Nixon joined him on stage for the ribbon release and then it was time for more building tours and refreshments.
If you’ve got one of the only Platinum LEED certified (by the U.S. Green Building Council) buildings in the state of Missouri and even in the nation then you should be congratulated for the accomplishment. That happened today at the official ribbon “release” for the new 
IDEA stands for “Immobilized Digestive Enzyme Assay” which Dr. Brad Lawrence says helps understand the digestibility of lysine and other amino acids in dried distillers grains (DDGS), the livestock feed by-product of ethanol production. “Distillers is one of the few ingredients that we have that does come from multiple manufacturing facilities with different methods that could impact amino acid digestibility,” Brad says. “We run this laboratory procedure that looks at all the digestibility of all the amino acids which gives us a tool to compare the economic value of distillers from different sources.”