Mycotoxins are fungal toxins that contaminate pig feed ingredients, causing serious health problems, reproductive failures, and welfare impacts often misdiagnosed.
Mycotoxin-related illness in pigs is a significant but frequently underrecognized welfare problem. Affected pigs experience reduced appetite, chronic discomfort, reproductive failure, and immune suppression that makes other diseases harder to fight. Because symptoms often appear gradually and resemble other conditions, mycotoxin exposure may go undetected for extended periods while pigs continue to suffer. Subclinical exposure that never triggers obvious illness can still significantly impair wellbeing through persistent gastrointestinal discomfort and impaired immune responses. Improving feed quality monitoring, grain drying and storage infrastructure, and routine feed testing would substantially reduce this largely preventable source of farm animal suffering.