Page 3 - APN July 2017

Pork CRC confronting hot issues with cool science
LAST month I suggested the next battles on the provenance front will likely need to confront antimicrobial use and resistance and environ- mental enrichment, first of pregnant sows and then all classes of pigs. Pregnant sows
Our researchers lead the world in animal welfare and Pork CRC has several well-advanced and crea- tive projects on enriching the environment of gestat- ing sows.
These include compar- ing the Ridley sow en- richment block with other strategies, such as straw and hay in racks and a new and novel project on human enrichment.
Remember too that we’ve previously repor t- ed on the work of Emma Greenwood, who demon- strated during her Pork CRC supported PhD that play behaviour in group- housed sows to objects hung from ropes above their pens was seemingly the most effective or in- teresting.
Of greatest interest and commercially applicable was that Emma demon- strated play behaviour actually increased with time.
This and the enrich- ment block I think offer some potentially simple, cost-effective enrichment strategies, perhaps along with others that are being investigated.
We are also exploring the enrichment block, or a version of it, for grower- finisher pigs.
Farrowing sows
The farrowing-lactating sow is a different matter and remains challenging.
We have investigated most of the freedom-type farrowing pens, modifica- tions of these to reduce piglet mortality in sum- mer and systems where sows and piglets are moved to groups after dif- ferent periods of confine- ment.
None has worked.
They inevitably result in increased piglet mortality and even increased sow aggression.
In a recent study where sows and litters were grouped at seven and 14 days after birth, the seven-day treatment had to be abandoned because of unacceptably high pig- let mortality and in both treatments sow welfare was compromised by ag- gression, which increased with time after grouping.
We have seen similar results with step-out type systems.
We are therefore now concentrating our efforts on defining and enhanc- ing the welfare of sows and their litters in conven- tional systems.
I will reveal the out- comes of these projects as they become available, but we certainly have the world’s best researchers www.porknews.com.au
Initiatives
working on it.
Antibiotic challenge
You are all aware that the issue of antibiotic use and resistance has global implications and is cur- rently being driven by regulators and retailers overseas.
Implementation is being led by the poultry indus- try.
While no antibiotics ever is certainly easier to implement with broilers than weaner-finisher pigs, the more judicious use of antibiotics and monitoring antimicrobial resistance is occurring in pork indus- tries worldwide and being led by the countries that export pork to Australia.
We therefore must en- sure we don’t fall too far behind.
To understand what is affecting our pigs and how disease might be bet- ter managed, Pork CRC researchers have devel- oped a range of new di- agnostic tests for the com- mon enteric and respira- tory pathogens affecting our herds.
They even discovered new strains of swine dys- entery and a new actino- bacillus species, suggest- ing a continual need for surveillance, as in both cases herds thought to be clean or free from the re- spective diseases were far from it.
At the University of Syd- ney, Prof Michael Ward and Pork CRC PhD stu- dent Lechelle van Breda have just completed one of the most comprehensive studies on E. coli across the Australian industry.
They established resist- ance to veterinarian and human antimicrobials, with resistance to antimi- crobials of human impor- tance being generally low.
They also provided ex- cellent information on how surveillance pro- grams might need to be adjusted to better detect antimicrobial resistance.
Other researchers and Pork CRC participants have developed alterna- tive strategies for reduc- ing the impact of patho- gens such as E. coli on animal health and one or two as genuine replace- ments for antibiotics.
Others are exploring novel techniques for com- bating ileitis using a quan- titative PCR developed by Dr Alison Collins at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute, NSW to monitor the in-
cidence of the bug and treatment effects.
Others are working on vaccines for APP, swine dysentery and strep suis and cost-effective strate- gies for reducing patho- gen loads in sheds, all of which, if successful, will
reduce antibiotic use.
Gut microbiome
Arguably, the more in- teresting outcomes have been the effects of antibi- otics on antibiotic resist- ance and the gut micro- biome.
I mentioned in my June Pork CRC Initiatives column that the latter is gaining interest in human medicine, with claims that faecal transplants have al- tered the phenotype of the recipient – not always fa- vourably.
In the pig, Prof John Pluske and his team at Murdoch University have demonstrated nutrition- ally induced changes in
☛ continued P4
Dr Emma Greenwood (left) did groundbreaking work on the behaviour of group housed sows as part of her Pork CRC supported PhD. At APSA 2015 in Melbourne she caught up with Dr Alice Weaver who was supported by Pork CRC during her studies at the University of Adelaide.
Australian Pork Newspaper, July 2017 – Page 3
by DR ROGER CAMPBELL CEO