Pig health progress

The theme of this year’s symposium was ‘Pigs, People and Pathogens: Mastering Farrowing, Animal Health, and Workforce Management’. It attracted an expert line-up of speakers, but this article will focus on the presentation by Dr Edgar Garcia Manzanilla who spoke of the challenges to pig health over the last five years.
The head of Teagasc’s pig development department, Dr Garcia Manzanilla used a wide array of data to great effect in highlighting the animal health journey undertaken by the Irish pig sector. In particular, he focussed on the health challenges and improvements made in the industry and outlined how that progress will be built on in the coming years. He began by considering the main issues faced by the sector in recent years, confirming the reduction in antimicrobial use since 2014, while animal welfare challenges have also diminished in the period. At the other side of the challenge equation he confirmed that, as in other food-production sectors, pig production has been inundated with increased regulatory standards and requirements, greatly increasing the amount of paperwork to be dealt with by producers. Manure management is another notable burden with ever increasing restrictions and conditions around its storage and use.

Advancing welfare standards

The contribution from the Teagasc expert was not all targeted at the challenges facing producers, however. He also highlighted the various positive aspects of pig health and welfare under which the Irish pig production sector operates. The fact that we are an island works to our advantage, helping to minimise the disease risk vectors that are so heavily impacting the global pig industry. He noted that the relatively small size of the Irish pig sector, in terms of producer numbers, works to our advantage also, making it easier to implement necessary protocols across the sector. Turning logic somewhat on its head, Dr Garcia Manzanilla rightly insisted that low levels of coordination between individual producers can be seen as offering an opportunity for greater cooperation and improvements of current health status in the sector. Likewise, he promoted greater engagement with private veterinary practicioners as offering another opportunity to improve health and welfare outcomes in the coming years. Ultimately, the Irish pig sector, in common with other livestock systems, is subject to common regulatory, health and welfare protocols and that has potential for some negative as well as positive outcomes for the sector.

Aspiring to best practice

While an ideal world is not really a practical aspiration, Dr Garcia Manzanilla made a fair case for aspiring towards a best possible outcome for pig producers. The centralisation of all relevant health-related data is, he said, a very positive and achievable target, resulting in health issues being identified and remediated quickly. Flowing from that, he advocated for a coordinated decision making and action-based response from the sector. Frequent input from frontline personnel, especially vets and advisors, would also improve overall outcomes, noting that an optimum ratio of one vet/advisor for every 20,000 sows with visits every four weeks would deliver further improvements in health outcomes.

Reflection

Reflecting on the road travelled in the past decade, Dr Garcia Manzanilla looked back at the state of the Irish pig production sector in 2014, when there was a lack of data on pathogen status and antimicrobial use. Gaps in biosecurity at that time were also noted, with the additional challenge of having almost no information readily available on farm and feed management. The fact that feedback from processors continues to be lacking in 2025, has to be a cause for concern for the Irish pig sector. Compared to 2014, salmonella infection as a public health and reputational risk for the sector has become far less of an issue.

Antimicrobial use reduction critical

That brought Dr Garcia Manzanilla’s presentation on to why antimicrobial use is such an important issue for the Irish and, indeed, global pig industry. He highlighted studies showing that antibiotic-resistant bugs have the potential to kill more than cancer in the coming decades, as more antibiotics become increasingly less effective in treating a range of infections. The threat to human health as much as livestock production cannot be over-emphasised. As antimicrobial resistance increases in the coming years, vulnerability to cardiovascular diseases, cancers, respiratory diseases, blood and endocrine disease as well as lower respiratory tract infections will increase at an alarmingly fast rate. The ability to develop novel antimicrobial solutions is nowhere near adequate to counteract the rising resistance to existing disease-suppression drugs.
It is important to appreciate that the livestock industry and, in this case, the pig production sector, has reacted positively to this challenge of reducing antimicrobial use to manage infectious diseases, with a range of actions to improve the situation. Ireland is now approaching the end of a second four-year plan to 2025, with another phase to be introduced for 2026 onwards. An antimicrobial use database has been in place since 2019, while the EU introduced a new cross-community medicine regulation in 2022. The removal of zinc oxide as a common feed inclusion has been in place since last year. The introduction of a digital prescription system for the treatment of pigs with antimicrobials, in common with other livestock, is now in place. Ultimately, as Dr Garcia Manzanilla emphasises, it is the cooperation of every link in the pig production and processing chain that is delivering improvements in both health outcomes and antimicrobial usage. Increased research as well as more shared management outcomes are vital to the delivery of further improvements in the sector, and the Teagasc expert is confident that this cooperative approach is working. This can be seen from a perusal of antibiotic veterinary sales trends since 2017. Over the following six years the trajectory has been almost uniformly downward, indicating a huge effort on the part of everyone involved to deliver positive outcomes in both reducing antimicrobial use while maintaining or improving pig health and welfare outcomes.

Ongoing improvements

But more needs to be and must be done, he told the IPHS symposium attendees. The list of biosecurity measures to be fully implemented to ensure best possible outcomes is both long and onerous for producers. The purchase of breeding pigs, piglets and semen, transport and removal of carcasses and manure, feed, water and equipment supply, visitors and farm workers, vermin and bird control, disease management as well as cleaning and disinfection, are among a range of operational and management procedures that must be implemented fully to ensure the best possible outcomes on pig farms. Best practice models are in place on many farms. The aim is to ensure one hundred per cent adherence on all production units. Dr Garcia Manzanilla provided data confirming the costs associated with less that perfect pathogen status and control across a study of seventy-two Irish pig farms. In a low margin production process, any shortcomings are expensive.
In his progress report Dr Garcia Manzanilla noted that supressing salmonella infection is making slow but steady progess. Centralising data needs to be valued as an essential tool in biosecurity. There has been good progress in reducing antimicrobial use, in improving biosecurity generally and in raising animal welfare. On a less positive note, he decried the continuing feedback deficits on pig health status from the processing sector. It is surely an issue that can be remediated quickly to the benefit of the entire pig sector.