With use of AHDB’s eMB-Pigs compulsory for all Red Tractor assured pig producers from November 2017, ABN are working with customers to simplify recording and uploading of their in-feed antibiotic usage.
“Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major concern for both human and animal medicine, and as part of a government driven strategy, pig producers have been tasked to demonstrate their proactive approach to reducing antibiotic use with accurate digital recording of medicines,” said Bob Dixon, ABN’s National Sales Manager for pig feed.
Mr Dixon said producers have then had to demonstrate this reduction through recording results in eMB-Pigs, which brings together antibiotic usage confidentially in one place.
“Pig farmers have really started to focus on reducing their antibiotic usage, and ABN has noted a large drop via feed reports.
“To help our customers monitor and record purchases, ABN has been emailing reports for the last 18 months direct to producers, detailing purchases of in-feed medication.”
However, he said historically for medicated feed to be recorded in eMB-Pigs, the data had to be manually entered by the producer into the database, which was time consuming for customers.
“We’re always striving to make data collection as efficient as possible, so we saw that the obvious next step was to develop the ability to transfer the reports that we provide, directly into eMB-Pigs on behalf of our customers.”
ABN has collaborated with AHDB to allow customer reports to be automatically incorporated, and Dixon said the feedback from those customers involved in the testing phase has been very positive.
“Customers have commented on the timesaving benefits that this is going to make to the data collection process, so we are now promoting the service to all of our pig customers,” he said.
“To allow this to be done, producers need to provide us with their Pig Hub I.D (sometimes referred to as their G.U.I.D) for each site, and we can then automatically upload details of feed deliveries from which the producer can then select and allocate actual usage for their eMB-Pigs quarterly return.
Emma Purdy, ABN Business Simplification Coordinator has been working with AHDB to simplify the process, and comments on how this will positively impact pig customers.
“Uploading medication data to eMB-Pigs in order to complete quarterly returns can take significant time for our customers, so we’re now able to cut out the middle process and input feed data directly.
“At a time where AMR is a very hot topic, we want to help our pig customers demonstrate the proactive changes that they’re making to reduce use, and we would like to thank our customers and AHDB for working with us on this project,” she said.
