Abstract
Sustainable livestock production requires links between farm characteristics, animal performance and animal health to be recognised and understood. In the pig industry, respiratory disease is prevalent, and has negative health, welfare and economic consequences. We used national-level carcass inspection data from the Food Standards Agency to identify associations between pig respiratory disease, farm characteristics (housing type and number of source farms), and pig performance (mortality, average daily weight gain, back fat and carcass weight) from 49 all in/all out grow-to-finish farms. We took a confirmatory approach by pre-registering our hypotheses and used Bayesian multi-level modelling to quantify the uncertainty in our estimates. The study findings showed that acquiring growing pigs from multiple sources was associated with higher respiratory condition prevalence. Higher prevalence of respiratory conditions was linked with higher mortality, and lower average daily weight gain, back fat and pig carcass weight. Our results support previous literature using a range of data sources. In conclusion, we find that meat inspection data are more valuable at a finer resolution than has been previously indicated and could be a useful tool in monitoring batch-level pig health in the future.
Highlights
Sustainable livestock production requires links between farm characteristics, animal performance and animal health to be recognised and understood
We examined the links between specific characteristics of farm infrastructure and farm characteristics, respiratory conditions and production traits using routinely collected production and meat inspection data—the Collection and Communication of Inspection Results (CCIR) data (Food Standards Agency)
Model 1 was the best fit for mortality (K-fold information criteria: model 1 = 38,532; model 2 = 38,684; model 3 = 38,946) and average daily weight gain outcomes (K-fold information criteria: model 1 = 39,951; model 2 = 40,145; model 3 = 40,111), meaning these traits are likely to be affected by farm characteristics via the effect of farm characteristics on respiratory conditions
Summary
Sustainable livestock production requires links between farm characteristics, animal performance and animal health to be recognised and understood. We used national-level carcass inspection data from the Food Standards Agency to identify associations between pig respiratory disease, farm characteristics (housing type and number of source farms), and pig performance (mortality, average daily weight gain, back fat and carcass weight) from 49 all in/all out grow-to-finish farms. Understanding how to respond to this demand can be aided by identifying relevant links between good animal health, efficient production and farm infrastructure Evidencing these links helps farmers make appropriate changes to produce healthy, productive animals under optimal conditions. Production and farm characteristics data may be recorded by pig producers at both batch and farm level to monitor production efficiency and to track the effects of farm characteristics decisions and disease control interventions Integrating subsets of these locally- and nationally-held data sources can help to clarify the associations between certain health conditions, farm characteristics decisions, and production outcomes. Respiratory disease may manifest in overt clinical signs and mortality, or be subclinical, with the adverse effects noticed through poorer
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