Study finds ATP luminometers can help assess farrowing room cleanliness

Although visual inspection is a commonly used tool in the industry to assess farrowing room cleanliness after cleaning and disinfection, visual inspection is often insufficient to confirm the absence of pathogens and reduce disease transmission risk. In a study funded by the Swine Health Information Center and led by Dustin Boler at Carthage Innovative Swine Solutions, adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence technology was investigated as an objective diagnostic tool for producers to ensure farrowing room cleanliness.

Across five farrowing crate locations and the room entry floor testing, the areas of highest concern were the sow feeder and the entryway floor as detected by both ATP bioluminescence and bacterial coliform plate counts. Overall, this study confirmed that ATP bioluminescence technology can be used as a monitoring tool for ensuring farrowing room cleanliness and identified the highest risk areas in the farrowing room for contamination.

Find the industry summary of the project, SHIC 24-001, here using the search feature.

Pig producers have adopted cleaning procedures and biosecurity practices to ensure farrowing rooms are free of infectious organisms before the next group of sows are introduced. However, there is a need for objective pen-side diagnostic tools that can assist in confirming cleanliness. ATP bioluminescence has been used in other industries to provide real-time feedback on surface cleanliness through the detection of ATP from organic sources.

The goals of this project were to:

1. Determine the areas of the farrowing crate with the greatest surface contamination risks.
2. Determine the correlation between microbial counts and relative light units as detected by ATP bioluminescence.
3. Identify the number of farrowing crate locations needed to accurately determine surface cleanliness.

Traditional monitoring methods (bacterial culture, qPCR, and virus isolation) were compared to the novel ATP bioluminescence technology.

For this study, samples were collected between April and May 2024 at a 5600-sow commercial farm in western Illinois. The sow farm had recently completed a porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and Mycoplasma elimination program but was experiencing frequent rotavirus outbreaks during the sampling period. The designated sow farm weaned approximately 200 litters of pigs each week and each litter averaged 12.5 weaned pigs per sow. Each farrowing room consisted of four rows of 14 crates each for a total of 56 crates per room. Approximately four farrowing rooms were washed every week.