Reducing Environmental Impact and Reliance on Antibiotics Top Pork Sector’s Priority List

The Chair of Swine Innovation Porc says reducing the environmental footprint of pork production and reducing the sector’s reliance on antibiotics will be among the top research priorities transitioning into the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership

FarmScape Online

The Canadian Agricultural Partnership, Canada’s new five year Agricultural Policy Framework, comes into force April 1st.

Swine Innovation Porc Chair Stewart Cressman told FarmScape Online that among the research priorities of both government and the pork sector are the environment and the use of antibiotics.

“The agri-science cluster programs have broken down barriers, allowing more collaborative research”

 

“Certainly the environment is very important on their radar,” he said. “We’ve always felt the way to reduce the environmental footprint of hog production is efficiency.
We can produce more pork with less sows. That has been successfully demonstrated with increased number of piglets per sow per year.”

He added that feed conversion has also been improved.

“The pounds of feed required per pound of lean gain continues to drop,” he adds. “I think one of the other main areas our research emphasizes is looking at reducing the reliance on antibiotics – not eliminating them entirely because we think they are a valuable tool to the industry – but using them strategically when needed,” he said. “We think the way to do that is aim our research at the microbiome.”

Microbiome is an area that is popular both in human studies as well as in animal agriculture as many believe it will provide answers that could reduce our reliance on antibiotics into the future.

Cressman says, “the agri-science cluster programs have brought stakeholders together with researchers and broken down barriers between institutions allowing more collaborative research.”

FarmScape Online