AHDB Pork publishes new eMB-Pigs user guide
25th Nov 2016 / By Alistair Driver
AHDB Pork has published a new user guide showing farmers the ins and outs of uploading data onto the eMB-Pigs database.
The guide can be accessed on the AHDB Pork website, with an email notification set to go out early next week.
You can also view it here
Hard copies are going to be available within a fortnight two weeks and the guide will be distributed as an insert in the January edition of Pig World.
eMB-Pigs, the electronic medicine book, is a website for all UK pig producers, enabling the industry to record more accurate on-farm antibiotic usage data.
Producers can use it, either to enter or upload their total antibiotic usage or to replace their current medicine recording book or system.
It will be used to provide an anonymised, aggregated national record of total antibiotic usage for the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD), when needed. There is a particular urgency to this now, with the industry and Government set to agree sector-specific targets for reducing antibiotic use early next year.
AHDB Pork's long-term view is that eMB-Pigs will help individual producers compare their on-farm usage to anonymised data from other similar units, to help them review their approach to antibiotic use and make management changes to reduce production costs.