Electronic medicines book helps monitor antibiotics use in pigs

Pig producers can now record medicines use in an electronic medicine book (eMB-Pigs).

The eMB-Pigs programme has been developed by AHDB Pork and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) to provide farmers with an electronic version of the existing paper medicines book, which is a legal requirement.

Currently, only total antibiotic sales data for pigs and poultry are available.

It is hoped the eMB-Pigs website will help give a more accurate picture of antibiotics use nationally and at an individual farm level so farmers can make informed decisions on optimising its use in the future.

AHDB Pork veterinary team manager Martin Smith said: “What’s more, the long-term view is that eMB-Pigs will help individual producers compare their on-farm use to anonymised data from other similar units, to help them review their approach to antibiotics use and make management changes to reduce production costs.”

Mr Smith said future system developments will allow farm management software and mobile apps to interact with the eMB so farmers can automatically upload medicine use data to the system. 

The online book is available to all UK pig producers and can be used instead of farmers’ current recording system.

You can access eMB-Pigs by using the same log-in details already used for the AHDB Pig Hub and eAML2. Once registered, users can also login directly at the eMB-Pigs site.