Genetic Selection for Disease Resilience Expected to Become Mainstream

The identification of genetic traits that contribute to disease resilience in swine can be expected to become a mainstream approach to protecting pigs from disease. Since 2015 an international team of scientists has been contributing to a natural disease challenge model, established at the CDPQ wean to finish commercial research facilities in Quebec, for evaluating the resilience of swine to disease.

 

Dr. John Harding, a Professor with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, explains pigs in the facility are exposed to many of the same infections that would be typically found in a commercial swine operation.

 

 

The key objective is to find indicator traits of resilience that can be measured in high health farms, nucleus or multiplication farms, that will improve disease resilience when those animals move into commercial farms that are less healthy. Diseases are getting more complex; production systems are getting larger.

 

We have vaccines in our arsenal but they're not always 100 percent effective and we don't have vaccines for some very key diseases. We also have this issue of antibiotics becoming less available to us through our judicious use movement. As well we have factors of resistance that are developing associated with use or over use.

 

The selection of genetically resilient pigs is really a valuable tool that we hope will become mainstream at some point in time in the future. We're not there yet but there are certain companies that are starting to use some of the previous findings from PRRS and perhaps Circovirus and incorporating resilience traits into their genetic selection processes. We're thinking that in the future that will continue as we have more results from this natural disease challenge unit.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.