Abstract
Organic and conventional pig farmers’ preferences regarding breeding goal traits important in pigs were investigated using an advanced internet-based questionnaire. Farmers were asked what pig traits they spontaneously considered important, to rank 15 given traits and to weigh traits against each other given the estimated genetic change (calculated based on selection index theory). Organic and conventional farmers ranked both functional and production traits highly. For example, more than 70 % of farmers from both production systems ranked piglet survival, fertility, sow longevity, leg health, feed conversion, piglet birth weight, piglet and slaughter pig growth as being of high or moderate importance (1–10/15). Litter size and shoulder ulcers were ranked higher by respondents from conventional farms, while parasite resistance and roughage consumption were ranked higher by respondents from organic farms. Regarding estimated desired genetic change, respondents from organic farms favoured health traits while conventional farmers favoured growth traits. In order to obtain genetic improvement in those traits, farmers gave low priority to carcass quality and litter size. Due to the variations in farmers’ breeding goal trait preferences demonstrated here, it is clearly important to take farmers’ preferences into consideration when developing future pig breeding strategies.
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