Driving results under disease challenges

A pig's ability to cope with disease is deeply rooted in its genetics. Every component of the immune system has a heritable genetic basis. Some pigs naturally:  

• Mount faster immune responses. 
• Regulate inflammation more effectively.
• Maintain feed intake during health challenges.
• Recover more quickly following infection.

These differences are influenced by thousands of genes working together and can have a meaningful impact on how pigs perform in commercial production environments. 

Resilient pigs are better equipped to cope with a wide range of health challenges, including diseases that may emerge in the future and for which no specific vaccine or treatment exists. In today's production systems, where multiple pathogens often interact simultaneously, this broader approach creates long-term value. This is what makes genetic disease resilience such a powerful tool for disease management. 

As disease pressure intensifies, enhanced disease resilience provides a sustainable path to strengthen pigs’ natural capacity to respond, recover, and thrive, generation after generation, from the inside out.  

That’s the approach behind R3silience. Rather than focusing on resistance to a single disease, R3silience enhances the natural disease resilience of the pig.

Selecting for improved disease resilience is significantly more complex than selecting for resistance to a specific pathogen. 

Resilience is a multidimensional phenotype influenced by many genes. Measuring it accurately requires data from animals exposed to disease challenges under commercial conditions, data that is harder to collect than the binary outcomes of resistance to a specific pathogen.  

This complexity is precisely why R3silience has required years of research, advanced data analytics, and substantial investment. 

The reward for navigating that complexity is equally significant: a genetic solution that works across pathogens, production systems, and geographies while continuing to deliver value as disease challenges evolve over time. 

R3silience delivers naturally disease-resilient pigs through conventional breeding methods, combining decades of breeding expertise with large-scale commercial data, advanced analytics, and years of focused research on disease resilience. 

R3silience pigs not only show higher survival rates but also maintain stronger production performance when disease pressure occurs. The result is a more resilient herd capable of delivering more consistent outcomes and sustainable production in commercial conditions. 

Resilient pigs 

R3silience pigs are naturally more disease resilient. They cope better with disease, whatever the pathogen. They demonstrate greater survival but also sustained growth under disease challenges and overall better production results. The pigs are healthier and experience better welfare, requiring fewer health interventions. 

• Higher survival 

R3silience pigs deliver higher survival, stronger overall performance, and healthier herds. Our research shows that it can help reduce wean-to-finish mortality by up to 6 percentage points during multifactorial PRRS outbreaks. 

• Sustained growth under challenges 

R3silience pigs not only show higher survival but also deliver superior growth. Our research shows that it can reduce growth rate loss under disease pressure, by improving daily weight gain by up to 0.04 lbs. per day under multifactorial PRRS outbreaks. 

• Improved health and welfare 

Our research demonstrates that R3silience pigs require fewer health interventions and up to 8% less antibiotic treatments from wean-to-finish, supporting better animal welfare. 

Reliable production 

Disease outbreaks create uncertainty. They generate additional workload, stress on production and on people. Production schedules become more difficult to manage, growth rates become less consistent, and mortality can significantly impact output. 

By improving the ability of pigs to cope with disease, R3silience helps create greater production stability and predictability under disease challenge, while maintaining flexibility.  

• Quick effect 

Benefits are realized as soon as high-resilient dam or sire line - or the combination of both - are introduced, and the effect compounds with broader adoption across the herd.  

Producers can start seeing the impact within approximately seven months when using a R3silience sire line. As adoption expands across both dam and sire lines, the benefits continue to accumulate across the herd, achieving full benefit with the full program in three years. 

• Cumulative impact 

R3silience is not an all-or-nothing approach. Gains accrue with the use of combined R3silience dam and sire lines.  

• Freedom to choose 

There is no mandatory program lock-in or full package purchase. Maintain flexibility while reaping cumulative benefits.  

• Reduced stress 

Resilient herds require fewer health interventions and treatments, helping reduce disease-related expenses, lower labor costs, and lessen the stress of outbreaks on farm workers and production.​ 

• Predictable production 

Based on research data and Estimated Breeding Values, R3silience can help producers achieve up to 10% more meat output during multifactorial PRRS outbreaks through a combination of improved survival and sustained growth. 

For producers, this means more pigs marketed, more kilograms produced, and greater confidence in production outcomes. 

Responsible Pork

The benefits of disease resilience extend beyond production performance. 

• Direct antibiotic reduction 

Antibiotic treatments are used to address primary or secondary bacterial infections, which can occur in conjunction with other health challenges. 

By improving a pig's ability to cope with disease in general, including bacterial infections, disease resilience can contribute to lower treatment requirements and support efforts toward responsible antibiotic use. 

• Food security and safety 

By breeding pigs for enhanced resilience to disease, rather than resistance to a specific pathogen, we avoid placing pressure on a single pathogen to mutate, reducing the risk of more virulent, lethal or resistant strains that could threaten food security and safety. 

• Lower environmental impact 

Healthier, more resilient pigs use resources more efficiently. 

Research has shown that improved disease resilience supports more efficient use of feed, water, medication, and other production inputs. Lower mortality rates also reduce the need for replacements, contributing to improved resource efficiency across the production system. 

According to FAO, genetics remains one of the most powerful tools available to improve productivity while reducing environmental impact. 

• Accepted by consumers 

R3silience is grounded in conventional breeding methods. 

It does not require regulatory approvals, specialized supply chains, or specific product labeling. Instead, it leverages natural genetic variation and genomic breeding technology to drive progress. 

R3silience’s sophisticated approach aligns with consumer preferences for breeding solutions based on natural biological processes, while delivering measurable improvements in animal health, welfare, production and environmental impact.

The benefits delivered by R3silience today are already substantial. 

Based on current research, considering the combination of reduced mortality and improved growth during multifactorial PRRS disease challenges can generate economic benefits of up to $2 per finisher when using the full R3silience program. 

And this calculation does not yet include the value of reduced labor pressure, more predictable production, lower treatment requirements, or environmental benefits. 

Most importantly, R3silience is designed for continuous improvement. Through ongoing research and genetic progress, we will continue to strengthen disease resilience in future generations. 

Our goal is to produce future-proof pigs that can tackle any challenge, current or future.