Farmscape for March 16, 2016

The Chair of Swine Innovation Porc says the microbiome in the gut offers one potential avenue for reducing the dependence of both animals and humans on antibiotics.
Swine Innovation Porc has identified the issue of antimicrobial resistance, reducing antibiotic use in swine production and developing alternatives to antibiotics as a key research priority.
Swine Innovation Porc Chair Stewart Cressman says enhancing the microbiome, the microbes that reside in the gut, offers tremendous potential as an alternative to antibiotics.

Clip-Stewart Cressman-Swine Innovation Porc:
There's some actually encouraging work that's been done on the human side in the sick kids hospital in Toronto but, now doubt, it's being done in other locations and some British work that has been done to look at impact on what antibiotic you might feed an animal or a human and how it alters.
It certainly addresses the bugs you want to affect but it also takes our the microbiota that you want, that are positive in the gut.
So I think, we can, in human nutrition, probiotics, the real thrust of the right microbiota in our gut is something that has gained a lot of traction and so what we're looking at is saying, as an alternative to antibiotics, can we seed the gut with beneficial microbiota and, as a result, have a more robust animal that would have a diminished need for antibiotics in the face of disease challenges.

Cressman suggests research aimed at enhancing the microbiome in the gut being conducted in human medicine can be applied to livestock and research results with swine can be applied to benefit human health.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork