World-first technology controls ratio of female to male pigs

J-STORIES - Against a backdrop of environmental destruction, growing concerns over animal welfare, and worries about food shortages, the global meat industry must address an urgent question: How can it make meat production more efficient and sustainable?

A potential solution is “sex-sorting” technology that separates male and female sperm to control the sex ratio in pig farming. By increasing the ratio of female to male pigs it can be used to improve production efficiency, and also animal welfare because fewer males need to be castrated.

Sex-sorting technology has already brought improvements to cattle and chicken farming, but so far implementation in pig farming has been limited. Now, Japanese startup Lullabio has devised a simple method of controlling the sex ratio in pigs based on cutting-edge technology, which it aims to commercialize within three years.

Bottles of the sex-sorting chemical reagent.     Source: Lullabio — Bottles of the sex-sorting chemical reagent. Source: Lullabio

Lullabio was founded at Hiroshima University and is headed by CEO Mitsuhiko Shirakawa. It uses technology for easy sex sorting of mammals that was developed by a research group led by the university’s professor Masayuki Shimada and announced in 2019. It is the world’s first technology to efficiently control the sex ratio in pig farming.

Sex-sorting technology in livestock farming has significant benefits, such as the ability to adjust the sex ratio for different purposes, reducing feed consumption, and reducing environmental impact. It is done by sorting X-bearing (female) and Y-bearing (male) sperm. In cattle, sorting is already common using a device called a flow cytometer.

X and Y sperm are separated when a reagent that binds to the receptor is put into pig semen.     Source: Lullabio — X and Y sperm are separated when a reagent that binds to the receptor is put into pig semen. Source: Lullabio

These devices, however, are expensive to purchase and maintain, making the technique difficult to use when farming pigs, which are sold at a significantly lower price than cattle. Another problem is that more sperm need to be sorted when the technology is applied to pigs. According to Shirakawa, using current flow cytometers, the number of sperm that must be sorted to breed one head of cattle is 2 million, but for a pig the number is 2 billion. He explains that it is difficult to sort so many sperm in a short time, and if it takes too long, the sperm will die. For these reasons, few pig farming companies use flow cytometer technology.

Producing the chemical reagent in a sterile room.       Source: Lullabio — Producing the chemical reagent in a sterile room. Source: Lullabio

Professor Shimada’s research led to a completely different technique. Instead of a flow cytometer, it uses a drug that binds to a receptor found only in mammalian X-bearing sperm, making it possible to easily separate X-bearing (female) and Y-bearing (male) sperm and use them in artificial insemination. Lullabio is responsible for the development, manufacture and marketing of the new chemical.

Although flow cytometer sex-sorting technology is already used in cattle farming, and in chicken farming through a different method, pig farming currently has no practical technique. Shirakawa describes it as a “blue ocean” market.

Lullabio has already signed a license agreement with Hiroshima University for use of its patents and is staging demonstration tests of its reagent at pig farms and pig breeding companies. Shirakawa says that sorting accuracy is currently around 60%, with different results depending on the type of pig and the breeding company. The immediate challenge, he adds, is how to improve this accuracy, and how to raise money for research to make that possible.

The size of the global meat market has been put at 200 trillion yen, of which the pig farming industry accounts for 20%. Japan meanwhile, only makes up 1.5% of a 300 billion yen market for sex sorting in pig farming, so the company also intends to target the USA and Europe. Lullabio estimates the effective global market for their technology at around 56 billion yen, excluding China and Russia.

“By efficiently producing the right number of pigs, businesses can expect to use less feed. What’s more, castration costs can be reduced, which is also beneficial from an animal-welfare perspective. Also, there are significant social ripple effects, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and continuing meat-eating culture.”- Lullabio CEO Mitsuhiko Shirakawa      Source: Lullabio — “By efficiently producing the right number of pigs, businesses can expect to use less feed. What’s more, castration costs can be reduced, which is also beneficial from an animal-welfare perspective. Also, there are significant social ripple effects, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and continuing meat-eating culture.”- Lullabio CEO Mitsuhiko Shirakawa Source: Lullabio

According to the company, while human application of the technology is theoretically possible, for ethical and patent-related reasons such research is currently not done.

Shirakawa says that the technology could have numerous benefits.

“By efficiently producing the right number of pigs, businesses can expect to use less feed. What’s more, castration costs can be reduced, which is also beneficial from an animal-welfare perspective. Also, there are significant social ripple effects, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and continuing meat-eating culture.”