Needleless Vaccination: What’s the Impact on Pain and Stress in Pigs?

Needleless intradermal (ID) vaccination of pigs in Canada is a growing practice. Compared to Western Canada, the technology uptake in Ontario has been slow despite the approval of NFID devices. ID vaccination is believed to cause less pain and reduce stress responses compared to intramuscular (IM) vaccination. It is also more efficient for producers and carries less risk of adverse reactions or injury to staff through contact with needles.

Madeline Benedetti, a second-year veterinary student at the Ontario Veterinary College, set out to prove these hypotheses in an environment realistic to Canadian swine farms.

Using realistic methods and relevant parameters for producers, her goal was to reiterate the importance of animal welfare within common practices of the swine industry, and to help pave the way for newer technology to enter Canadian markets to further improve the experience of producers.

“My research project studied the effects of intradermal vaccination on animal welfare, stress responses and pain, adverse reactions, labor efficiency, and injuries to producers using parameters such as behavioral observations, responses to a novel object, serum cortisol levels, vocalization frequencies and intensities, vaccination time, and more,” Benedetti explained during the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference.

In the study, over 1,100 weaner piglets were used in the trial in one of three treatment groups. The groups included an intradermally vaccinated group using the IDAL device, an intramuscularly vaccinated group using a needle, and a control group that was touched with a capped needle but subject to the same environment.

The study uncovered that intradermally vaccinating piglets with the IDAL device decreased stress responses and pain (less serum cortisol, less vocalizations, less vocalization frequency, and less vocalization intensity), improved animal welfare (were more active and responsive to a novel object), was more efficient, and safer (less chance of serious adverse reactions or human injury).

“There were no significant differences between piglets vaccinated with the IDAL device or piglets not vaccinated at all. Piglets that were randomly selected for bleeding are still being sampled for immunological and titer data, so stay tuned for updates on my trial,” she said.

Benedetti believes the most important takeaway from her trial is that producers can achieve the same results every day on their own farms.

“Saving 0.65 seconds of vaccination time per pig, decreasing human injuries, improving the welfare of the animals, and preventing systemic adverse reactions can increase profits for producers in a variety of ways,” she pointed out. “Also using a device that can give up to four immunizations in one administration, is battery operated, has an ergonomic design, and can store vaccination data all improve the quality of work for laborers in the swine industry.”

She also said increasing the market for intradermal vaccination and introducing more products will allow companies to decrease their prices and provide better service for producers.

“One thing that set my research apart from others is that we used a pig board to bring the piglets to the front of the pen for vaccination, similar to what producers would do, rather than picking up each piglet individually,” she added. “This was done to see if we could replicate results from other studies in an environment realistic to the Canadian swine industry. The hope was that my trial would feel relevant to producers in order to gain their interest in intradermal vaccination.”

Benedetti was one of seven students competing for the 2024 Morrison Swine Innovator Prize.