“Anorexia-Like Wasting Syndromes in Pigs”, 2001 ():
In the last decades demand for high quality pork meat has led to the development of modern intensive pig production methods. As a result of the modification in the breeding, feeding, housing and management, modern intensively raised pigs have become more sensitive to social stress. The grouping imposed in many industrial pig units has consequences for feeding behavior, feed intake, growth and the health status of pigs.
Pigs, in particular those that have been bred for the purpose of extreme leanness, can develop irreversible self-starvation and emaciation. Anorexia in pigs develops mainly post-weaning as the wasting pig syndrome (WPS) or after farrowing as the thin sow syndrome (TSS). The clinical features of these syndromes show an uncanny resemblance to those of anorexia nervosa of humans.
The aim of this chapter is to present WPS and TSS as possible animal models of disorders of eating and body composition in humans. WPS and TSS are related mainly to social and environmental stressors that occur during the critical periods of lactation and weaning, and are widespread within some modern intensive pig husbandry systems
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