Ractopamine, developed by Elanco Animal Health and marketed under the trade name Paylean, is a dietary supplement which promotes lean meat production while inhibiting fat production in pigs. Prairie Swine Centre Research Assistant Dr Denise Beaulieu told those attending the 2007 Focus on the Future Conference last week in Saskatoon.

Dr. Beaulieu says by using an ingredient like Ractopamine, because it improves the efficiency of pork production, we are decreasing the nutrients in the manure so decreasing nitrogen and phosphorus output and perhaps also decreasing the amounts of carbon dioxide and ammonia, which are greenhouse gases.

Efficiency and utilization
Two experiments will be carried out. The first experiment will look at feed intake, the nutrients in the feed and the nutrients retained in the animal to know the efficiency of utilization of those nutrients. Another experiment will be looking at feed intake versus the nutrients that are lost in either the manure or the urine to determine the outputs and inputs and again the efficiency of utilization of those nutrients.

The project is scheduled to get underway within the next month or so and is expected to take about eight months to complete.

Related website:
Prairie Swine Centre

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