Peadar Lawlor

INTRODUCTIONFinding effective strategies to improve chicken’s feed efficiency (FE) is a major goal to decrease overall production costs, preserve additional edible resources for humans, and reduce the ecological footprint of chicken rearing systems (Bottje and Carstens, 2009; Yan et al., 2017). Chickens of divergent FE differ in several phenotypic characteristics with the most obvious differ ...

IntroductionThe continuous increase in the area cultivated with genetically modified (GM) crops [1] and consequently their ubiquitous presence makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to avoid GM products. However, the dispute regarding the safety of GM crops is far from resolved [2] and consumer opinions vary over time and from country to country [3,4].Bt MON810 maize is resistant to attack ...

Improving feed efficiency (FE) reduces the environmental impact and increases the profitability of pig production. Despite the improvements in pig FE achieved in recent years1,2, it still takes~3.5 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of saleable pig meat2–4. Nutritional strategies can be implemented to improve FE; however, the impact of these strategies on the microbial composition of the g ...

IntroductionWeaning is arguably the most stressful period in the pig’s life. At weaning the pig is removed from the sow where it has had access to ~20 small feeds of sow’s milk each day. It is removed to unfamiliar surroundings and mixed with strange pigs in pens where the only available food is predominantly vegetable in origin and generally fed in dry form. It is hardly surprising th ...