An Alberta based swine veterinarian is advising pork producers to avoid the use of blood plasma products in swine rations and where the products are used to source them only from certified processing plants.
Questions over the use of blood plasma products in rations for baby pigs was among the topics discussed yesterday as part of a PED telephone town hall meeting hosted by Alberta Pork.
Dr. Frank Marshall, with Marshall Swine Health Services, says, although we have lots of good information about the safety of the processing of these products, there is still a consensus of opinion among veterinarians for non-usage.
We absolutely understand the good science behind blood plasma processing and the safety that it should impart.
However there’s been still as yet no clear explanation or speculation as to how live PED, Deltacoronavirus and TGE ended up in blood plasma products in a mill in Ontario.
At the end of the day it’s about mitigating risk.
It’s negligible but we’re mitigating risk for your farm and for our industry.
If we don’t have to use it we shouldn’t have to.
Again, we’ve talked about weaning pigs at 28 days lessening the need for these very complex upper end diets.
The pressure for usage of bovine plasma products from strict bovine source plants may provide us with greater sense of comfort but again we would like to see those plants validated and verified on PED PCR testing that they are in fact free of that and there is no cross contamination going on at those plants.
At the end of the day it is the producers’ decision and his confidence in what information he’s been provided to consider usage on their farms.
Dr. Marshall stresses producers who choose to use these blood plasma products need to ask about their origin and the plants they come from to ensure that they’re only bovine origin and they’re not mixed with porcine.
