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Pig Journal Volume: 62
Publication date: June 2009

General Section

FIRST OUT TO BAN FEED ADDITIVES IN 1986. VETERINARY CHALLENGES WITHIN SWEDISH PIG PRODUCTION - PART I: USE OF ANTIMICROBIALS AND RESPIRATORY DISEASES
P. WALLGREN

Abstract
The Swedish pig industry today comprises 160,000 sows and rears 3.25 million pigs to market weight. Being surrounded by water and employing a restricted import of animals, the health status is favourable.
A ban of so called growth promoters (i.e. low dose antibiotics in the feed by routine) was brought in, in 1986. Use of antibiotics in therapeutic doses to diseased animals has never been prohibited, but large scale medications are preceded by a proper diagnosis and a written disease prevention strategy including a last date for the in-feed medication. A doubling in incidence of post-weaning diarrhoeas and severe problems with Swine Dysentery followed the ban. Also, other diseases were at hand and the mean age at 25 kg body weight was increased by one week at a national level.
Obviously disease preventing measures were mandatory. Today the main part of the pig production takes place in age segregated systems from birth to slaughter and the productivity is well above that prior to 1986. The antibiotics used in veterinary medicine have decreased by 60% since the ban and antimicrobial resistance among microbes is uncommon.
This manuscript focuses on the use of antibiotics and on efforts made to prevent respiratory disease.

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