Farmscape for September 17, 2018

A Swine Nutritionist with Iowa State University says pork producers have and will continue to reduce their use of antibiotics in raising hogs.
Legislation-Consumerism-Export, Complicating the Life of the Nutritionist will be discussed in mid-November as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2018 in Saskatoon.
Dr. John Patience, a Professor in Applied Swine Nutrition with Iowa State University, observes, on the legislative side, pork producers are using less antibiotics due in part to new regulations which govern antibiotic use.

Clip-Dr. John Patience-Iowa State University:
We can only use antibiotics for the purposes of treating specific diseases in specific circumstances.
In this country they're called veterinary feed directives, so a veterinarian must prescribe the medication and must have a purpose in mind for prescribing that medication.
Interestingly, in this country the use of antibiotics had actually declined prior to this legislation becoming law.
In the year prior to this change antibiotic use in livestock was already in decline.
We have haven't seen the numbers yet but I'm pretty confident that we're going to see further decline.
The focus is on those antibiotics which are used in human medicine and so there's a real attempt on the part of the industry even without the legislation but certainly supported by the legislation to substantially reduce the quantity of antibiotics that are used in human medicine for purposes in animal agriculture.

Dr. Patience says, as a consequence, there's a tremendous amount of research going on to identify, develop and improve alternatives to antibiotics so we're seeing more and more pigs in the U.S. being produced in what's referred to as antibiotic free production systems and in Canada as well.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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