Swine health

Preventing disease

• Good gut health can help prevent disease in swine — Gut microflora, diet and increases in pathogens interact in swine digestion. Formulating diets is a key tool for maintaining gut health and preventing intestinal disease, especially when using less antibiotics.
• Operations contingency plan for swine producers — The fillable PDF outlines essential livestock care if you or your managers experience illness, injury, or another emergency when you may need outside people to provide care. This contingency plan covers essential care only; it is not a comprehensive care plan. The form will automatically download to your device. You will need a current version of Adobe Reader DC to fill out and save the form.
• Understanding coronavirus transmission — Three known coronaviruses have had devastating impacts on the swine industry. The viruses can be spread through equipment, people, other objects and feed. Contaminated soybean meal has the greatest potential risk for transmitting swine coronaviruses. How long does coronavirus live in contaminated feed?

FDA antibiotic regulations

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulations for on-farm antibiotic use in food-animal production took effect January 1, 2017. These efforts aim to

• Stop the use of medically important antibiotics for growth promotion in food-animal production.
  • Medically important refers to antibiotics used in human or animal medicine, or antibiotics in the same family of those medications.
• Bring therapeutic use of antibiotics in feed and water – to treat, control, or prevent specific disease – under additional veterinary oversight.
• What pork producers need to know about FDA antibiotic regulations.