Urgent call to enter antibiotic usage data by the end of the year
1st Dec 2016 / By Alistair Driver
AHDB Pork has issued an urgent plea to any producers who have not done so yet to enter antibiotic usage data onto the eMB-Pigs database by the end of the year.
In order to speed the process up, it is offering, for a limited period, to enter producers' data onto the system.
The levy board pointed out that the information entered onto the eMB-Pigs database will be used to benchmark and help set informed and realistic 10-year targets for antibiotic usage next year.
The pig industry has been told by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) it needs to provide data from at least 70 per cent of the national herd by the end of this year.
The latest figures showed, cumulatively, data from 535 sites covering just short of 6 million pigs has been uploaded onto the eMB-Pigs database so far. This equates to only 17.5 per cent of UK slaughter pigs for 2015 and a similar figure for 2016, which is why there is now a renewed drive to encourage producers to upload data.
AHDB Pork said: "If you haven’t already done so, the industry urgently needs 2015 on-farm antibiotic usage data, in any shape or form BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR.
"Producers can upload this data to the electronic medicines book (eMB-Pigs). However, in this instance, due to impending deadlines, 2015 data can also be sent, in any format, to your KE manager or the pig hub () and we will upload it for you."
To help producers upload usage data to the eMB a new step-by-step user guide has been produced. The guide is available to download and will soon be available in hard copy.
For more information about eMB-Pigs, visit AHDB Pork's website.
AHDB Pork is continuing to work with large corporate pig producers individually to encourage bulk data uploads to be provided. It is also working with feed companies to encourage feed data to be uploaded directly into eMB-Pigs and with farm software companies, to promote data sharing.