ABOVE: Led by Professor Sam Abraham and involving the Feedworks team, a recently completed project investigated novel approaches for reducing antimicrobial resistant and pathogenic gram-negative bacteria in the pig gastrointestinal tract, specifically ETEC.
Reducing antimicrobial use for disease control – for example for post-weaning diarrhoea caused by strains of enterotoxigenic escherichia coli – as well as the issue of antimicrobial resistance in commensal bacteria such as e coli and enterococcus spp are of great importance to the Australian pork industry, from both an animal health and public health point of view.
For over 20 years, Dr John Pluske has been involved in research investigating the implications of strains of enterotoxigenic e coli (ETEC) causing diarrhoea in piglets.
He said that finding ways to manage the issues without antimicrobials could not only improve production but of course reduce the negative impacts of AMR.
“Today we have specialty products, refined diet formulations and improved management protocols that have been developed with the aim of successfully integrating them into commercial production systems,” Dr Pluske said.
“But there are always new approaches and strategies to evaluate.”
A recently completed project, led by Murdoch University Professor Sam Abraham and involving the Feedworks team, investigated novel approaches for reducing antimicrobial resistant and pathogenic gram-negative bacteria in the pig gastrointestinal tract, specifically ETEC.
In particular, the project team were interested in the roles that postbiotics in the form of specialised dried yeast ferments (saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation products) and specialised dried lactobacillus (lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation products) could play in reducing post-weaning diarrhoea and AMR.
The use of postbiotic products in ETEC-inoculated post-weaned pigs showed promising benefits in terms of growth and faecal health scores.
This may be attributed to the increase in the diversity of intestinal microbiota in pigs with postbiotic-supplemented diets.
The researchers noted that in a commercial nursery, high levels of AMR infections were found at weaning but naturally declined over four weeks following weaning.
Dr Pluske said that investigating methods to tackle AMR and remove bacteria resistant to critically important antimicrobials once established in a herd would continue.
“It may be that a combined approach of decolonisation using competitive excluding clones, target-specific bacteriophages, nutritional additives and/or removal of co-selection pressure can resolve this issue,” he said.
Australasian Pork Research Institute Limited together with the Murdoch University, SunPork Group, Australian Pork Limited, Feedworks, Rivalea (Australia) and Tecan Australia are currently supporting a transformational project ‘Novel approaches for combatting antimicrobial resistance in Australian pigs’ – exploring nature’s antimicrobial arsenals, naturally derived feed additives and natural bacterial flora to combat resistant bacteria, and investigating some of these aspects further.
