Selecting for your profitability

From our start in 1962, PIC has focused on combining the latest science, pig biology and pork production economics to create the highest quality pig on the market. At PIC, we strive to earn the trust of our customers by helping them grow their business and respond to changing demands in the industry. Our goal is to enable our customers to become highly successful pork producers.

We focus our genetic improvement program on Total Economics, which means maximizing the commercial value of our genetics in our customer’s operations. This means that we objectively combine our genetic predictions for all traits that are economically relevant. The approach ensures that we drive our populations and products towards the optimum combination of traits. While this will likely not optimize a single biological trait, this approach will provide the most value and bottom line impact for our customers.

As market demands evolve and new measurement techniques become available, PIC expands the traits it selects for. A recent example is the inclusion of new traits that are relevant to total carcass value. Historically, PIC used hot carcass weight, back fat and loin depth as indicator traits of total carcass value. PIC has also selected for pH and marbling as traits that explain part of the variation for meat quality. Since July 2018, we have enhanced our genetic program to directly capture and select for saleable primal yield and consumer eating satisfaction (tenderness). Whatever our customer’s goal and challenges, we will utilize our strengths to carry their business through and support them to meet their objectives.