May 21, 2009

A research commissioned by British Pig Executive (BPEX) in UK has shown that pleurisy is a massive stumbling block for both pig producers and processors.

The researchers said that 78 percent of all batches of UK pigs showed some indication of pleurisy, with 10 percent of those showing pleurisy running at more than 20 percent.

The researchers followed 80 batches of pigs through to slaughter, monitoring environment, performance and management techniques, and they found that the disease reduced growth rates and led to lower carcase weights, as well as increased ages at slaughter with additional feed costs.

The total economic impact was calculated at 226p/pig, not including veterinary costs, assuming a prevalence of 10 percent.

Studying historical data of 120 pig herds with a history of either a high prevalence of pleurisy, above 10 percent over the past two years, or a low incidence of pleurisy, less than 5 percent over the past two years, as well as problems caused by the disease at abattoirs, the researchers were able to identify a series of risk factors that led to a high incidence of the disease.

These included the failure, or inability to implement strict all-in all-out management at unit, or building level, repeated mixing of pigs after weaning and repeated moving of pigs even without mixing.

Also, units with farrow-to-finish production systems had a higher incidence of pleurisy than ones with off-site rearing, where incidence was further reduced by operating wean-to-finish systems.