DREAMSTIME


NEWS ▶▶▶ ASF vaccine passes another test


The vaccine candidate under development at the Agriculture Research Service (ARS), part of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), passed an important safety test required for regulatory approval, moving the vaccine one step closer to commercial availability. In an ARS news release the development was described as “an important milestone as part of a series of safety studies”. Those new results show that USDA’s vaccine candidate does not revert to its normal virulence after being in- jected into swine. That “reversion to virulence” test is required to ensure that the vaccine’s weakened form of the ASF virus does not re- vert to its original state. These safety studies are necessary to gain ap- proval for use in Vietnam and eventually in other countries around the world. Future com- mercial use, however, will depend on approval from the department of animal health in each requesting country. Results of the tests were published in April in the peer-reviewed scientific title Viruses. In the article, the researchers concluded, “Results


from safety studies showed that ASFv-G- ΔI177L remains genetically stable and pheno- typically attenuated during a five-passage re- version to virulence study in domestic swine. In addition, large-scale experiments to detect virus shedding and transmission confirmed that even under varying conditions, ASFv-G- ΔI177L is a safe live attenuated vaccine.” The vaccine candidate was recently selected by the Vietnamese National Veterinary Joint Stock Company (Navetco) for commercial develop- ment in Vietnam. Navetco has partnered with ARS on ASF vaccine research and development since 2020.


Use of bakery products in feed


An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wast- ed or lost every year, which represents one- third of all that is produced for human con- sumption. With rising feed costs and increasing sustainability concerns, do former food prod- ucts have the potential to replace conventional feed ingredients? One study aimed to find out. The study, conducted at Italy’s University of Milan and the Università Telematica San Raf- faele in Rome, set out to determine if food in- dustry leftovers (or former food products) could be a valid alternative to grains in young pigs’ nutrition. The research team investigated the possibility of partially replacing standard ingredients with two different types of former food products, namely bakery or confectionery former food products, and studied their effects on growth performance, feed digestibility and metabolic status in post-weaning piglets. In the study, 36 post-weaning female piglets were randomly assigned to three experimental diets for 42 days: a standard control diet; a diet with 30% chocolates, biscuits and sweet


snacks; and a diet with 30% bread, pasta and salty snacks. The results regarding growth performance showed that there were no significant differ- ences in body weight between the groups. Body weight measured at the piglets’ arrival and at the end of the trial did not differ be- tween diets. Average daily feed intake was not affected by any dietary treatments. In addition, the experimental diets did not affect the aver- age daily gain or feed conversion ratio. Fur- thermore, no significant effects of the diets were found in the analysed haematological pa- rameters between the groups over the entire experiment. This study, therefore, showed that the 30% in- clusion of two different types of former food products rich in carbohydrates and fat in the diets of post-weaning piglets is possible. It was demonstrated that body weight, average daily feed intake, average daily gain and feed conversion rate were similar between the three groups.


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▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 38, No. 4, 2022


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