Pork Checkoff Research
Research is at the heart of the National Pork Board’s mission and is funded by your Pork Checkoff dollars. Research is administered in all areas of pork production, processing, and human nutrition to develop a higher quality and more profitable product in the competitive meat protein market.
Contribute to Pork Research
Learn more about how you can help advance the pork industry through ongoing research.
Animal Science
Understanding the biology of seasonal infertility to develop mitigation strategies for swine
Mitigating seasonal infertility is critically important to increased production efficiency for American pork producers. Elevated ambient temperature is a significant factor contributing to...
Pork Quality
Determination of the correlation of loin quality parameters with fresh belly characteristics and fresh and processed ham quality
One of the key challenges currently facing the pork industry is a lack of insight into the relationship between loin, belly, and ham quality. Most published research focuses on loin, belly, or...
Pork Safety - Pre-Harvest
Evaluating strength, sharpness, and detection of swine-use hypodermic needles
A previous study (circa 2000) investigated swine-use hypodermic needle strength and detection. At that time, needle...
Pork Quality
A systematic review of patterns in tenderness metrics of North American based pork from 1994 to 2014
Pork value is determined by its composition and by consumer satisfaction. Several metrics of pork are considered indicators of tenderness and overall quality. We conducted a systematic review to...
Animal Science - Swine Nutrition
Improving milk production efficiency and mitigating feed costs in lactating sows through dietary crude protein abatement and crystalline amino acid supplementation under thermo neutral and thermal stress environment model
Objectives:To determine if lactating sows can be fed diets containing less protein in order to reduce the quantity of nitrogen excreted into the environment. To determine if sows fed...
Swine Health - PRRS
Use of interferon alpha as an immunomodulator and metaphylactic therapeutic during PRRSV outbreaks
The host response to virus infection begins almost immediately with recognition of virus by host cells leading to the production of antiviral substances such as interferons. One interferon,...
Animal Science
Integrated Sustainability Modeling for Swine Farm Operations
Swine Health - General Disease
Linking veterinary diagnostic laboratory submissions and corresponding PEDV test results to spatiotemporal mapping tools: the future of disease management, control and elimination
Streamlined systems that link diagnostic submissions and corresponding test results to spatiotemporal disease management tools are needed to enhance US pork producers’ ability to proficiently...
Animal Science
Evaluation of contributions to seasonal reproductive inefficiency
Seasonal reproductive inefficiency is globally observed within the swine industry. Even when photoperiod and temperature are controlled, reductions in pregnancies and subsequent farrowing rates...
