Pig industry organisations are working with Defra and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) to gather the necessary evidence to justify zinc oxide products being licensed again in the UK.
Current supplies of zinc oxide for use at medicinal levels in piglet feed to control post-weaning diarrhoea (PWD are expected to be exhausted in the summer. This was after the VMD surprisingly granted an extension in the UK last year by allowing the industry to use up any product bought up to when the authorisation expired in June 2022.
However, pig vets and producers are keen for zinc oxide to become available again in the future and the VMD appears to be sympathetic.
During a Pig World roundtable event, sponsored by ForFarmers, Pig Veterinary Society (PVS) senior vice president Jim Morris explained that the VMD has been persuaded to develop its own model to establish whether EU modelling that led to the EU-wide ban on zinc oxide because of fears over soil contamination was appropriate for the UK.
“The soil types where zinc tends to be too high are acidic, sandy soils and there are not many of these in the pig producing areas of this country,” he said.
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