Preventing diarrhoea in piglets with Detach

The trial was conducted on a commercial pig farm in Northern Victoria, and the data obtained will be used to support Anatara’s application to register Detach for sale in Australia with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA).

The farm had a history of problems with pre-weaning diarrhoea, otherwise known as scour. Current approaches such as vaccines as well as antibiotics had failed to adequately control the problem.

21 litters treated

There were 21 litters treated with Detach (233 piglets), while 23 litters were administered a placebo (229 piglets) in a randomised and blinded study. The trial investigated the incidence of death and scour, morbidity (or piglet clinical condition), antibiotic use as well as weight gains and found:

• DetachTM significantly reduced piglet mortality by 47.8%. There were 19 piglets treated with Detach that died compared with 36 control piglets.
• DetachTM reduced severe morbidity, or life threatening disease. In the control group, there were 38 morbid piglets, of which 36 died, compared with 28 morbid Detach piglets of which 19 died.
• Detach increased the average weight of each piglet at weaning by 210g (or 5.2%). The increase in average daily weight gain to weaning was 5.3%.

Anatara Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Tracey Mynott said: “The results from this trial reproduces our findings from our earlier registration trials where Detach was proven to be safe and effective in several thousand piglets on commercial pig farms.  In these early trials, as in the current trial, it significantly reduced mortality, and improved piglet weight gains which provides an economic benefit to the farmer.”

Launch in the EU and USA in 2017

Anatara will now focus on completing additional registration trials, as well as scaling up its activities for registration of Detach in Europe and the USA. Subject to successful field trials and regulatory approval, Anatara plans to launch Detach in Australia in 2016, and then launch in the EU and USA in 2017.