Antibiotic-free pigs are the way of the future to some but an industry detriment to others.
They should attract the European Union that now wants to ban four growth promoting antibiotics, said Richard Stein, vice-president of Thames Bend Farms, an Ontario-based company that has hogs in the United States and Manitoba and recently arranged to supply stock to an Alberta barn.
“We must be highly conscious of what is needed to meet those marketplaces and those marketplaces only want our top, high quality pork,” said Stein.
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The company, which plans to supply hogs to a 1,200 farrow-to finish hog barn near Viking, Alta., next month, is using technology to improve disease resistance in “high health” herds that won’t need antibiotics to survive, said Stein, adding vaccinations will be sufficient.
“We are on the verge of having totally free antibiotic herds.”
Only a portion of the Viking stock will be bred for the superior herd while the rest will be sold as gilts to other farms or for slaughter.
Julia Keenliside, a swine veterinarian with Alberta Agriculture, thinks Stein’s idea is possible but doesn’t agree it’s the way to go.
“I would prefer to see a lot less drug use in the animal but I don’t want to see a ban because I think the reason we have antibiotics is to keep our stock healthy so we have a safer meat product,” she said.
There isn’t enough evidence to prove hogs treated with antibiotics are dangerous to eat, said Keenliside.
“We do have evidence that some antibiotics used in agriculture might be leading to more resistance problems because there’s some cross resistance with antibiotics used in humans. But it’s very specific with certain antibiotics. There’s a lot of antibiotics we use in animal agriculture which are not a concern for humans.”
Keenliside said a blanket ban on antibiotics would probably be easiest for consumers to digest, but thinks they need more information. In fact, people should be more concerned with antibiotics they take themselves, she said.
“That’s the biggest irony of all. People want evidence that the pigs have never had any antibiotics yet they go to their doctor and use it on themselves.”
Refusing to treat sick animals with antibiotics could turn into an animal welfare issue and feed and growth efficiency in pigs would decline, she added.
That could increase the price of pork by two or three times, said Red Williams, animal science professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He doesn’t think an antibiotic-resistant herd would be profitable or able to combat disease effectively.
“I certainly wouldn’t invest a nickel in it quite frankly. The achilles heel is disease and we have to use a number of tools to try and keep that disease level down. Antibiotics is a very significant part of a healthy population that grows fast and gets to market fast.”
Stein refused to get into technical specifics of his goal, saying more details will be released in about six months.
