In a video recording of a truck’s interior, several pigs being transported from a farm to slaughter stand stiffly with their legs apart. For the entire length of the journey, the pigs maintain this posture – bracing themselves and balancing their weight against the accelerations and decelerations of the truck.

They stay standing because if they lie down, the slightest fluctuation in the truck’s speed or direction would send them tumbling into the walls or each other. Upon arrival, the animals are fatigued and disoriented from stress.

This revealing video, as well as the monitoring of the pigs’ health before and after transport, is part of an ongoing research project led by Michael Ellis, professor of animal sciences in the college of ACES.

Working in partnership with family-owned swine production business, The Maschhoffs Inc. and through the sponsorship of Elanco Animal Health USA and the National Pork Board, Ellis and his team have worked for two years to determine the reasons for pig death during transport and solutions to the growing problem.

“We monitored probably about 60,000 pigs heading towards the packing plant … taking note of all pigs which arrived dead and incapacitated,” Ellis said.

An average of about two in one thousand pigs die during transport, and about five to seven in one thousand arrive at the plant incapacitated, Ellis said.

Research on the transport phase in the pork industry, he said, has lagged behind other countries such as Denmark, Holland and the United Kingdom.

To the pork industry, the transport phase is critical for quality control – bruised or stressed muscles result in poor quality meat. Complete loss of an animal before arrival at the plant is an even greater economic loss.

But to Ellis, the motivating factor that drives his devotion to the project is not the income loss for the farms.

“The major issue is animal welfare which is very poor and we need to minimize losses from that perspective,” he said.

Two years ago, Ellis pioneered the research project that is steadily bringing the industry closer to eliminating the problem.

Among the many factors that have been observed to result in losses, Ellis identified the environment inside the trucks as the biggest concern – and the most difficult to solve.

Most transport trucks utilize water sprinklers and ventilation holes for hot days, which help to cool down the animals’ bodies. During the winter, drivers close the ventilation holes in order to reduce the amount of cold from entering and heat from escaping.

However, these methods are subjective to the driver’s judgment – he or she would make the call before departure on whether it is necessary to employ these methods.

“It’d be better to be able to provide specific recommendations to what drivers need to be doing,” Ellis said.

These recommendations, which Ellis and his team have been developing, are derived from many conditions – the humidity and the activity level of the animals, for example.

The second factor that is critical in minimizing transport losses is the amount of space that is given to each pig.

On a hot day, pigs need to be placed farther apart to increase airflow and minimize contact between animals. In colder conditions, animals must be closer together to sustain heat.

Also, the greater the space between animals, the more prone they are to being thrown around by the movements of the truck.

These changes could cut losses by at least half, Ellis said. But the process is hardly a matter of computation.

Ted Funk, extension specialist in agricultural engineering, will soon be working with Ellis in the designing of a truck that would reduce transport losses. Depending on Ellis’ recommendations, design could range from simple changes in bedding and control of ventilation holes to a new truck with an automated climate control system.

“Let’s say you’re hauling vegetables and you have to keep them cold,” Funk said. “It’s one thing to devise a refrigerated truck that doesn’t have control over change in atmosphere, but when moving live animals, you have to maintain heat balance and it’s much more complex.”

So for now, compromising with perfecting recommendations to drivers, seems to have the most potential to yield positive results, Ellis said.

“I think there is significant potential in the project,” said Bradley Wolter, director of products and technology at The Maschhoffs Inc. in southern Illinois. “We have implemented those changes and we have seen market improvement in number of injuries in the pigs during transport.”