REDUCING ANTIMICROBIALS POST-WEANING

Posted in: Nutrition, Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on May 10, 2017

Antibiotics need to be used judiciously. If antibiotics are used when they are not needed, or in a way that provides no benefit, it is a waste of money. Reducing antimicrobial use may help to reduce production costs. In addition, antimicrobial resistance is an emerging problem on pig farms and the over use of antimicrobials does create selective pressure which promotes the increased prevalence of resistant pathogens making treatment of sick animals more difficult. Treatment of animals without a good response due to resistance causes economic loss because of reduced pig performance but also the expense associated with medication. Judicious use does not mean that antibiotics should never be used. Failure to treat conditions that can be readily cured with appropriate antibiotic use results in economic loss and reduced animal welfare.

The hardest problems with measuring antibiotic use are;

1. What unit do you use to describe antibiotic use?

2. How do you compare the use of one antibiotic with the use of a different antibiotic because there is a huge difference in the relative importance between certain antibiotics?

3. How do you persuade anyone to keep accurate records of their antibiotic use?

Treatment record-keeping will need to become routine and we will need to begin to create a standardized method of comparing drug use between farms such as calculating animal daily doses so that antibiotic use can be discussed in the same way as pigs/sow/year.

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