Innovative swine nutrition: some present and potential applications of latest scientific findings for safe pork production

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges facing animal agriculture in the 21st century is to produce safe and traceable foodstuffs of animal origin in sufficient volumes and quality besides the lowest possible load on the environment. A point to consider is how animal feeding and nutrition can contribute to the solution of this challenge. Another question is, that the results of which new scientific fields should be used in the area of innovation to achieve the desired product quality. The article answers these questions based on the latest data in the scientific literature and on the authors’ own research results. Having reviewed and processed the data, the authors drew the following conclusions: 1. The impact of climate changes on crop production and consequently on animal nutrition needs to be studied in comprehensive, systematic research programs, and based on their results animal feeding systems should be modified if necessary. 2. The role of molecular nutrition and the immunological role of nutrition for enhancing the efficiency of production will gain in importance. 3. The cooperation between nutritionists and geneticists needs to be strengthened in order to satisfy the nutrient requirements more accurately, and thus to improve the profitability of production. 4. New mathematical growth models, also incorporating the quality of animal products, need to be developed for better production estimates. 5. The integrated “from farm to fork” programs will be essential in the production of safe and high quality animal food products. Animal nutrition will play a key role in these product development and monitoring programs. 6. The production of environmentally friendly animal products will become a social imperative. Animal nutrition still has huge unexploited reserves in this field, for instance in the development of novel animal feeding systems and technologies. 7. T he practical implementation of precision nutrition can be of great help in achieving these goals and in improving the efficiency innovation activities.

Keywords

• Swine nutrition, Innovation, Feed quality, Food quality, Food safety.