Swine veterinarians — Key players in the pork production chain

In 2020, Canada was ranked as the seventh highest pork producer in the world. Swine veterinarians are responsible for overseeing the health, welfare, and care of the sows, boars, and growing pigs from birth to processing. In doing so, Canadian swine veterinarians are contributing to the safe production of over 13 billion meals each year.

Swine veterinarians are known for their dedication and for constantly striving for improved welfare and innovation. Currently, swine veterinarians have a critical role in on-farm food safety, infectious disease prevention and control, biosecurity program design and implementation, and on-farm medication use oversight that obviously includes prudent antimicrobial use. Swine veterinarians are also involved in more global issues such as disease surveillance, welfare code development and implementation, education to prevent farm animal contamination by foreign animal diseases and increasing animal owners’ awareness of the issues related to antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Before diving into the activities of swine veterinarians across Canada, it is helpful to understand the spaces that swine veterinarians occupy. There are numerous veterinary practices specialized in swine medicine across Canada. Swine practitioners working in these clinics are considered private practitioners. Corporate companies that are vertically integrated (integrated from birth to processing) often employ staff veterinarians. Both corporate and private practitioners are often involved in veterinary associations, sit on various community working groups that are involved in disease surveillance, animal welfare and biosecurity issues, as well as volunteer in various roles in veterinary medicine and the pork industry.

Swine veterinarians have diverse backgrounds, whether they started as a mixed practitioner that had an acumen for pigs, or a veterinarian that became involved in swine practice right out of school. Regardless of their path, swine practitioners are committed to the health and welfare of their clients’ pigs.

Swine practitioners are working in collaboration with swine-focused specialists from various organizations such as provincial and federal government institutions, universities, diagnostic laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and producer pork boards. One of the major roles of swine veterinarians is to simplify complex information and data into usable working processes at the farm level, in efforts to maintain and improve animal health and welfare. This information comes from involvement in research, academia, laboratory diagnostics and surveillance.

The day-to-day practice of swine veterinarians is surprisingly varied. When it comes to health management, veterinarians could be walking the barn with producers, identifying improvement areas such as hygiene and pig handling. These veterinarians could also be involved in helping with a vaccination trial or implementing a new treatment protocol on farm, all while educating the producer and staff on the rationale and justification for these changes. When unexpected health challenges arise, veterinarians and their support staff are on-call to visit the farms, walk the barns and identify disease, as well as collect and submit samples. Following through on these findings can vary from a one-time disease diagnosis and treatment to a long-term management, diagnostic, and treatment plan to deal with a disease. This can involve thousands of dollars of diagnostics, numerous telephone calls to colleagues, multiple follow-up visits, and dozens of hours communicating and implementing the next steps.

Swine veterinarians are also involved in the design and delivery of food quality assurance and animal welfare certification programs. Canadian Pork Excellence (CPE) is the new national platform that covers 3 major components of on-farm programs: traceability, food safety, and animal care. The CPE program is intended to be a key component of international trade. The program helps Canadian pork producers demonstrate their production of safe pork from pigs raised in compliance with the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points principles, national biosecurity standards, and the Code of Practice requirements.

Many swine veterinarians are involved in the improvement and auditing of the swine producer on-farm food safety and animal care programs.

The 2016 Code of Practice for swine brought forward significant changes to requirements in the care and handling of pigs. Compared to historical working processes, major changes are focused on implementation of group housing for gestating sows, enriched environment for growing pigs, and improved pain management during castration. Another key working process reviewed in this Code of Practice was how to humanely euthanize pigs. These new pig code requirements are now integrated in the CPE PigCARE program.

One of the main challenges of swine veterinarians is to work with the swine producers to help them to integrate new working processes at the farm level. Swine veterinarians have an important role to increase compliance of swine producers when new regulations are being implemented.

In addition to on-farm food safety, welfare, and health management, many Canadian swine veterinarians have critical roles on national committees involved in the development and improvement of national policies on animal health and welfare issues. Having swine veterinarians involved in policy and decision-making at a national level has resulted in an effective framework to protect Canada from foreign animal diseases. For example, Canada implemented import restrictions on high-risk feed components, including the requirement of import permits for feedstuffs originating from certain countries with African Swine Fever (ASF). Canada has also implemented quarantine requirements for livestock feed ingredients imported into Canada from these countries.

Importers are required to heat treat high-risk feed components or hold them for specific intervals at certain temperatures; these conditions were determined by veterinarians involved in swine research. Furthermore, these requirements are the result of industry and swine veterinarians pushing to take critical leaps forward in protecting the national swine herd. The progress made in import regulations and holding of imported feed ingredients has been praised internationally.

Judicious use of antimicrobials and antimicrobial surveillance has been in the public eye and at the forefront of veterinary medicine for the past decade. Historically, many antibiotics were sold over the counter in most Canadian provinces. This has now changed and, as of December 2018, a veterinarian prescription is required to sell all Medically Important Antibiotics (MIA) to Canadian farmers in all provinces. Moreover, the dispensing of antibiotics in Canada has also changed because MIA can no longer be purchased over the counter in the local agricultural supply store.

The modifications on MIA prescriptions and dispensing practices have had a significant impact on day-to-day use of antimicrobials at the farm level. Pig producers and swine veterinarians seem to have adapted extremely well, with more targeted disease management and antimicrobial use occurring on farm.

Swine veterinarians have key roles in on-farm antimicrobial use oversight in 4 ways:

1. they ensure that there are adequate diagnostics to prevent unnecessary antibiotic use;

2. if the animals require antimicrobial treatments, they prepare the required prescriptions;

3. they prepare specific indications for swine owners and farm workers to ensure antibiotics are used appropriately (right product with the proper dose for the right duration); and,

4. swine veterinarians are responsible for defining the withdrawal period, to ensure the absence of drug residues in the final product.

Finally, swine veterinarians are also involved in antimicrobial use and antimicrobial resistance surveillance in Canada. For example, swine veterinarians have participated in the collection of samples for the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS). Swine veterinarians have a critical role in the forum of AMR discussion through advisory roles, research, and surveillance. In the last 5 y, antimicrobial usage and resistance has been a topic of discussion in almost every swine-focused, continuing education event.

Swine veterinarians are contributing toward the health of the national swine herd in Canada and ultimately to the food safety of pork through the many activities listed above. Through each of these roles, swine veterinarians continue to commit their expertise and time to the furthering of the health and welfare of pigs.