Farmscape for November 12, 2015

A veterinarian with Davidson Swine Health Services says consumers who want pork raised without antibiotics will have to be willing to pay higher prices.
"Raised Without Antibiotics, Pork Production" will be among the topics discussed next week in Saskatoon as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2015.
Dr. Shawn Davidson, with Davidson Swine Health Services, notes we're seeing increasing pressure from retailers, the food service industry and consumers for a niche market pork raised without the use of antibiotics.

Clip-Dr. Shawn Davidson-Davidson Swine Health Services:
Certainly the raised without antibiotic programs come with their challenges.
Clearly there are things that antibiotics are clearly superior at controlling compared to the alternatives but there are getting to be better alternative technologies.
We're getting a lot better at the diagnosis of disease and knowing exactly what we're treating, thus we can use better vaccination programs as 1 tool of prevention.
There's getting to be several alternative feed additives that are available on the market place to enhance digestibility of feed.
There's all kinds of work out there about healthy gut flora and ways that we can manipulate the gut flora in a way that helps prevent disease through competitive exclusion and there's several products that use different technologies to achieve that.
But there has to be enough premium in it to make it worthwhile.
That's one thing that consumers need to understand as well.
We can, as an agriculture industry, do things differently but however there still has to be a margin of profit in it for us to do it.
These types of programs, some of the alternative technologies we're adopting are more expensive than antibiotics.
Our production levels are going to decrease by some margin without the use of antibiotics so the cost of that has to be picked up.

Dr. Davidson says we have producers that are capable and willing to produce pork without using antibiotics so that's fine this but there has to be something in it for them as well.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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