By Bruce Cochrane.
The Canadian Pork Council is advising western Canadian pork producers to be monitoring feed grains closely for the presence of mycotoxins.
The Canada-West Swine Health Intelligence Network Second Quarter Producer Report on Swine Health warns the alternating warm and cool conditions this summer are thought to be idea the contamination of feed grains by fungus.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Council with the Canadian Pork Council, says there's been a lot of discussion this year about the threat posed by mycotoxins.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff-Canadian Pork Council:
In our first quarterly report we had lots of discussion on mycotoxins.
As we move into our second quarterly report we're again having lots of discussion on mycotoxins.
This growing year appears to really have been a good year for growing mycotoxins.
We've had variable weather, very up and down, alternating moist, alternating warm so as we go into the fall I think all of us are concerned that mycotoxins are something that could be on the rise and something that we should look at closely.
We've got a number of different mycotoxins that we would commonly see here in western Canada, the T-2 toxin, the DON toxin and all of us hear about Ergot all the time in our different grains.
I think, probably the best recommendation I can make is work with your nutrition team to get your feed tested prior to bringing in large ingredients.
Get them tested, make sure the levels, if present, are acceptable and if they're not acceptable, these are feeds that we need to get out of the barns or prevent from ever arriving in the barns.
Mycotoxins can be very devastating to barn health and certainly to production.
Dr. Brockhoff says, as we're moving forward with harvest and post harvest getting the feeds into the pigs, it's going to be critical to make sure we're surveilling this.
Source: Farmscape