NORTHERN pig farmers will soon be able to benefit from pig breeding stock supplied locally from one of the Pig Improvement Company's newly-established high health multiplication units.

Birchwood Farms, near Carlisle, will supply customers in Durham and Yorkshire as part of PIC's major bio-security drive to help safeguard the national livestock industry, post-foot-and-mouth.

The company is establishing a number of very high health units nationwide to serve local producers.

"These units are selected because they fulfil the stringent 1000-point bio-security score, a protocol used exclusively by PIC to select suitable multiplication production sites," said Stephen Dunstan, PIC's UK general manager. "They are isolated units in low pig density areas, with experienced management teams."

In a rapid, seven-day re-stock of more than 1,000 sows from PIC's high health nucleus and multiplication unit in Scotland, Birchwood Farms will become a "closed" high health unit, with a home breeding programme made possible by using PIC's Gti (artificial insemination) and genomic technology.

Three units are involved. The 370-sow Cummersdale, stocked with PIC Grand Parent 10 10s and Grand Parent 10 50s is to form an immediate multiplication unit. The other two units, stocked with Camborough 23s, are earmarked for future multiplication status alongside Cummersdale over the next 24 months.

Birchwood Farms is owned and managed by Mike, Philip and Julie Sanderson and Richard Allison. It was established in 1994 following their management buy-out of the three farms from a leading food processing company.

"We decided to re-stock after finding ourselves in a Defra kill-out zone and had all our original stock killed," said Philip Sanderson. "We were all experienced unit managers and were determined to turn a setback into an opportunity to upgrade and restock as a closed unit with the kind of high-performing stock we were used to.