Identifying obstacles to reducing the use of antibiotics to control porcine proliferative enteropathy

Proliferative enteropathy (PE) is an enteric disease of pigs that results in diarrhoea, reduced growth rate, reduced feed conversion efficiency and sometimes death. A survey of 13 pig veterinary practitioners in Australia was conducted to determine: (1) PE control strategies (antibiotics and vaccination), (2) how the efficacies of these strategies are evaluated and (3) how reliance on antibiotics could be reduced by increasing vaccine adoption. Antibiotics were routinely prescribed in the diets of weaner, grower and finisher pigs by 9/13, 10/13 and 8/13 veterinarians, respectively, if vaccination was not implemented. Water-soluble antibiotics were prescribed less frequently than in-feed antibiotics. Efficacy of control strategies was assessed most often through reduced clinical signs (diarrhoea, 'tail-ender' pigs, death) and reduced lesion incidence at abattoir postmortem inspection. Twelve practitioners had recommended PE vaccination to their clients in the previous 6 months. Barriers to continued vaccine implementation included perceived lack of efficacy for pigs housed in bedded systems, high cost relative to medication and difficulties in vaccinating pigs post-weaning.