Farmscape for March 1, 2013

The marketing and technical services manager with AcuShot Needle-Free is confident that, as pork producers see the benefits of eliminating needles, interest in needle-free injection will build.
Needle-free injection technology utilizes high pressure and high velocity to blast the compound being administered to the animal through the skin without the need for needles.
Mike Agar, the marketing and technical services manager with AcuShot Needle-Free, says the economic down turn that has impacted the pork industry has slowed the adoption of the technology but he's confident, as producers see the benefits and concerns over animal welfare and food safety become more important, interest in needle-free will grow.

Clip-Mike Agar-AcuShot Needle-Free:
The main benefits that it offers is one, by not reusing a needle or going to needle-free you're not carrying one possible disease to a number of animals within the production facility so basically you're not sharing  diseases so you're ensuring the health status of those animals in a greater fashion.
There's much less pain derived from the use of needle-free.
The animals settle down, they don't get as stressed out during a vaccination event when you use needle-free versus needles.
They stay on feed, they're happier, they keep drinking and generally they produce better because of it.
The animals are quieter so it's actually even safer for the people who work in there because sound levels can damage the eardrums and definitely when you use needle-free that aspect of production is better as well and there's actually less possibility that someone is going to inject themselves and certainly they're not going to stab themselves with a needle because it's just not there any more.
The animals benefit, the people benefit, the food quality status goes up.

Agar says there's not too many things that you can describe as an innovation for the industry that hits the mark in that many different areas of quality and safety.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council