Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 6/9/15

Lysozyme, a naturally occurring antimicrobial enzyme that is used in food and beverage applications such as cheese- and wine-making, may prove useful as an antibiotic alternative for improved feed efficiency and growth in pigs, according to studies by USDA scientists.

Their research coincides with ongoing debate over whether using antibiotics in this manner contributes to the emergence of resistant bacteria strains, threatening the compounds’ availability and effectiveness as infection-fighters in both veterinary and human medicine. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria sicken more than 2 million people in the United States each year and kill more than 23,000 directly.

Pork producers are currently under pressure to eliminate sub-therapeutic antibiotic use throughout the production cycle. Finding safe and effective alternatives to conventional antibiotics may give producers viable options in the event the antibiotics are removed from use, William Oliver, a physiologist at the agency’s Agricultural Research Service in Clay Center, Neb., said in a news release.

Oliver and his ARS and university colleagues began investigating lysozyme in 2010. In a recent trial conducted at Clay Center, they compared the growth rates and weight gains of two groups of 600 piglets placed on one of three diet regimens: a standard feed regimen of corn/soybean meal and specialty protein; a second regimen of the same with lysozyme added; and a third containing the antibiotics chlortetracycline and tiamulin hydrogen fumarate rather than the lysozyme.

The groups were kept in weaning pens that had either been disinfected or left uncleaned since the last group of animals had occupied them. The latter was done to stimulate long-term immune activity, including the production of cytokines, which divert nutrients away from growth in swine and result in slower weight gain.

They found that piglets on lysozyme- or antibiotics-treated feeds grew approximately 12 percent faster than untreated pigs—even in uncleaned pens, suggesting that the treatments successfully ameliorated the effects of indirect immune challenge in the animals.

To read about this research in the May 2015 issue of AgResearch magazine, click here.

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