Pig farmers are strongly encouraged to reduce their antimicrobial usage because of the rising threat from antimicrobial resistance.
However, such efforts should not compromise the herd health status and performance. This study aimed to describe the profile of so-called ’top-farms’ that managed to combine both high technical performance and low antimicrobial usage.
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 227 farrow-to-finish farms in Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden. Among them, 44 farms were allocated to the top-farms group and were compared with the ’regular’ farms group in terms of farm characteristics, biosecurity and health status.