Consumers keep demanding more and more from hog producers in Canada. While often quite disturbing at the outset, many times it leads to the betterment of the industries, and sometimes it may also cause undue stress, hardships, and ultimately higher producer costs.

There was a time producers used antibiotics, almost at will, but higher costs and poor hog prices, and consumers demanding reduced uses in the food they buy has the industry focusing on less and less use of the drug.

Dave Van Walleghem, the national biosecurity specialist with Vetoquinol Canada says, in response to the trend toward reduced use of antibiotics, pork producers are stepping up their focus on cleaning and disinfecting facilities. Van Walleghem says every pathogen poses a risk and producers and veterinarians are relying more and more on stepped up biosecurity and an increased focus on cleaning and disinfecting equipment to reduce the risk.

“I think that’s why we really seeing an increase on that because of the decreased use of antibiotics,” he said. “Because we are using fewer amounts of antibiotics, we have to control the diseases one way or another and by breaking the disease cycle by doing a proper cleaning and disinfecting, we’re finding a lot more benefits of that allowing animals to express more of their genetic potential instead of fighting off the disease.”

Van Walleghem says cleaning and disinfecting properly is a huge part of all of our biosecurity today and it’s a huge economic benefit, something he’s been finding for the past 15 years.

“I’m finding a lot of people are understanding the proper use of disinfecting and not seeing it as a cost factor and more as an investment because it is saving them money in the long run,” he said. “If you can spend a dollar at the front end and get 13 dollars in the back end, you’re better off.”

Van Walleghem says for example a study shows where for every dollar spent on proper cleaning and disinfecting, that’s not just including the soaps and disinfectants but also the actual process itself, showed a 13 to 15 dollar payback with shipping animals in earlier time, less feed consumption and better healthier animals.

He knows, and the industry knows antibiotics will be pulled back from producers in the next little while so they want to make sure to do proper cleaning to reduce the amount of antibiotics producers need to use.

Dr. Shawn Davidson, a veterinarian with Davidson Swine Health Services says, despite its growing popularity with consumers, demand for antibiotic free pork is unlikely to overtake that of commodity pork.

Dr. Davidson also says the industry is certainly seeing an increase in demand for antibiotic free pork, with some of the announcements by food services such as Subway announcing its animal protein products will be antibiotic free within a certain number of years and A&W’s promise to provide poultry raised without antibiotics, but when it comes to overall demand cost is a factor.

“We know from many studies that when consumers are surveyed about things like antibiotic free pork, a majority of them will say yes, we want this,” he said. “But then when you get them in the actual store and with the wallet in hand, they’ll buy the commodity product because it’s cheaper so cost is a factor. Public perception is a factor.”

Davidson says the information and sometimes misinformation that exists surrounding antimicrobial resistance and the amount of antibiotics that producers actually feed to animals, there’s a lot of misconceptions that will drive some consumer opinions. The internet is a very powerful force and influencing people’s opinions for better or for worse. “It’s important, as an industry, that we do continue to get the facts out there about what is actually going on but there’s certainly always going to be a certain proportion of the consumers that are going to demand and prefer this type of product and I think the percentage of those consumers will continue to grow,” he added.

Dr. Davidson says it’s generally accepted that around $5.00 to $6.00 per pig U.S. is the minimum hard cost of raising pigs without antibiotics, a result of increased feed costs including the use of feed additives, the increased use of vaccinations and things in the barn like having lower stocking densities and better ventilation systems. • — By Harry Siemens