‘I haven’t used blanket feed or in-water antibiotics in years… if an animal needs treatment then it gets an injection’

Colin Marry is adamant that farming can be made more environmentally friendly without compromising output.

He is all about finding uses for products that other farmers might discard. And he is particularly concerned about the overuse of antibiotics.

“Farming can be linear,” he says. “Things go in and out and there’s a lot of things involved that are not utilised. We need to look at these things to produce more.

“It doesn’t happen overnight you need a lot of time to adapt a traditional farm.

“When it comes to the environment, rather than reducing what we’re doing, it’s about looking at the connectiveness.

“The pig is the great recycler of food. In my case they reuse the by-products from the rapeseed and olive oil industry.

“In recent times focus has been on increasing production but now there is more of a realisation that sometimes we can go to far in one direction and forget about the overall connectiveness of the world, especially with the increased awareness of our carbon footprint.

“I think there are answers in farming, for example with the algae I was producing from the waste streams from pig production. But it would take a lot of investment in the long term to make it work. It’s all about joined-up thinking.”

When it comes to animal health, Colin stresses that there are options that don’t involve over-using antibiotics.

“We try to improve pig health in the long term,” he says. “There’s pressure on using less antibiotics, so I’m looking for ways to improve the health of the animal without using antibiotics.

“I haven’t used blanket feed or in-water antibiotics in several years, so if an individual animal needs treatment then they get an injection.

“I started using an algae supplement which improved the lactating pig health and in turn improved the suckling pig health.”

Colin has previously stressed: “Healthy animals don’t need antibiotics. Antibiotics are very important for the treatment of sick animals and I think farmers have a duty to try to protect the effectiveness of antibiotics for the future by using them responsibly and only when necessary.

“That is the message I would like to get out to farmers. We need to make sure we use antibiotics in a careful and targeted way so that they continue to work well against the illnesses we need them for.”