Thursday, April 28, 2011
Antibiotic Use In Hogs: Who Is Using And Why?
Double-barreled criticism has been leveled at the livestock industry for its use of antibiotics, with critics contending the residue in the meat is allowing consumers to become susceptible to staph infections that are uncontrollable with human antibiotics. As reports increase about infections in hospitals and the virulence of such diseases being immune to the most sophisticated medicines, a consensus may be building about the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics in meat animals. But what is the practice by livestock producers and what does the consumer not know about the recent changes?
The last thing needed by the livestock industry is the consumer dictating how to run their operations. If that were the case beef and pork would be 25¢ per pound, despite what feed prices might be. Most cowboys and pork producers would be happy to supply the consumer what they want, provided the exercise is profitable. But when death loss is high, the profits are lost also, and that is the reason for the use of sub-therapeutic levels of antimicrobial drugs to ward off potential diseases.
A trio of USDA’s economists from the Economics Research Service looked at current practices in the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics (STA), following 60 years of use by US pork producers. Their research indicated that drugs pose a low risk to human health, but that has not diminished the public concern about the development of antimicrobial drug resistant bacteria. Among the trends is a European ban on the use of antibiotics since 2006 and increasing scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration, along with the periodic introduction of legislation that would ban the use of certain antibiotics.
As producers know, feed efficiency can be increased with feeding of low levels of antibiotics since organisms in young animals can compete for nutrients from the feed. The antibiotics also suppress diseases that hinder growth, and certainly assist animals which are being produced in environments which may be subordinate to the newest facilities. The use of STA changed from 2004 to 2009, but change was different from one producer to another according to the USDA’s Ag Resources Management Surveys. The economists looked at the results of the ARMS surveys from about 12 hundred producers in 2004 and 2009 to measure the change. Among the points that were identified:
1) In both surveys antibiotics were most often fed for disease prevention, particularly to nursery pigs in farrow to finish operations.
2) Antibiotic feeding for growth promotion was most common for finishing hogs, and while that was reported on 40% of the operations in 2004, it had declined in 2009 to 22% of farrow to finish operations and to 35% of feeder to finish operations.\
3) For nursery pigs, the use of antibiotics declined by 8-9% of farms from 2004 to 2009.
4) The use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics (STA) on nursery pigs for growth promotion and disease prevention on farrow to finish farms declined from 64% in 2004 to 55% in 2009.
The trends were not only obvious among the types of farms, but for other farm demographics as well. Farms that were more likely to use STA were:
• Larger operations with twice the number of head than non users of STA
• More specialized in hog production with 2/3 of farm product value from hogs.
• Located in the Eastern US and in the Cornbelt.
• More often than not to use the PQA Plus program if they were farrow to finish.
The USDA economists concluded that farrow to finish operations feeding sub-therapeutic antibiotics to nursery pigs improved productivity by one-third, but suggested those operations had a lot to gain to begin with, such as stressful climate, poor environmental conditions, and lesser management practices.
They also concluded that feeding the antibiotics just to nursery pigs indicates that productivity in the hog industry as a whole would decline and impose significant economic costs on hog producers. That cost would be in the form of increased mortality and reduced performance.
Additionally they found little relationship between feeding antibiotics and the productivity of finishing hogs, and any restrictions imposed on the use of STA on finishing hogs would have little impact on US hog production. The economists say their results parallel those of the experience in Europe, in which the ban on antibiotics had a major cost incurred from poor animal health at early stages in the life of a pig, but little impact in the finishing stages.
Summary:
From 2004 to 2009 the pork industry in the US has made significant changes toward the reduction in the use of antibiotics in hogs. Many of the changes will be on farms with certain characteristics, such as size and type of operation, but other farms have recorded little change. Researchers have found that diminished use of antibiotics on young pigs will result in higher mortality rate, and less productivity. However there would be minimal impact of a ban on antibiotics on finishing hogs.
Posted by Stu Ellis on 04/28 at 12:00 AM | Permalink