Profitable Use of Ractopamine in Hog Production Economic Evaluation Using a Pig Growth Model

Purdue University 2002 Swine Research Report. The inclusion of ractopamine (RAC) in late finishing swine diets can be potentially profitable for hog producers by improving feed efficiency, growth rate and carcass lean percentage. The introduction of RAC may fundamentally change the profitability and management strategies of the pork industry. Recently, a pig growth model has been developed, that incorporates the impact of RAC on pig compositional growth and nutritional requirements (Schinckel et al., 2001). The objective of this research was to utilize the compositional pig growth model to evaluate the economically optimal use of RAC with different marketing systems.