Midwest ASAS 2026 Signals a Data Driven, Biology Centered Future for Swine Production
- April 24, 2026
- News
Midwest ASAS 2026 Signals a Data Driven, Biology Centered Future for Swine Production
By Josh Kyle, Product Leader – Nutrition
Overall Summary:
- Industry moving toward biologically informed, data driven, sustainable production.
- Predictive tools + biological insight are becoming core to future gains.
- United shows strong leadership in microbial, gut health, and early life research and innovation.
- Key opportunities: sustainability framing, sow focused research, advanced analytics.
- Convergence of nutrition, health, and data science is the next competitive edge.
- United is positioned to lead by boosting visibility and aligning innovation with industry priorities.
1. Microbiome Driven Nutrition
What We Saw:
- Heavy focus on microbial ecology, early-life microbiome development, and non-antibiotic interventions.
What It Means For Producers:
- Microbiome first nutrition strategies are becoming foundational for gut integrity, early life resilience, and reduced antibiotic reliance.
United Research & Position:
- United is leading with long-term investment in microbial innovation and functional nutrition, placing it ahead of most competitors.
2. Piglet Survivability & EarlyLife Risk Prediction
What We Saw:
- Talks emphasized preweaning mortality, sow functional capacity, and predictive modeling tools.
What It Means For Producers:
- Early-life resilience is viewed as the biggest system-level profit lever; survivability is shifting from reactive to predictable.
United Research & Position:
- United is highly aligned through work on early-life nutrition and nutrition strategies to improve health and resilience.
3. Precision Nutrition & Ingredient Functionality
What We Saw:
- Strong emphasis on nutrient utilization, ingredient consistency, and functional feed components.
What It Means For Producers:
- Producers are increasingly relying on validated functional ingredients to reduce variability and improve feed conversion.
United Research & Position:
- United is leveraging proprietary technologies to deliver precision nutrition that is outcome focused.
4. Sustainability, Efficiency & Welfare
What We Saw:
- Environmental impact, nutrient excretion, and feed efficiency are becoming measurable KPIs.
What It Means For Producers:
- Sustainability is moving from marketing to mandatory reporting for integrators and packers.
United Research & Position:
- United Animal Health has tools to improve the production environment and promote pig health & production efficiency for sustainability wins—opportunity to help customers tell a stronger story.
5. Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning
What We Saw:
- Industry movement toward predictive tools for survivability, sow efficiency, and microbiome forecasting.
What It Means For Producers:
- Producers who adopt predictive tools gain faster detection, improved decision speed, and reduced mortality.
United Research & Position:
- Our investment in technology, our precision research capabilities, and our research focus provides us the capability to lead in delivering practical, producer ready predictive tools.
6. Sow Productivity & Reproductive Efficiency
What We Saw:
- Increased emphasis on functional teat count, sow metabolic efficiency, and maternal influences on survivability.
What It Means For Producers:
- Sow-driven performance determines piglet consistency, weaning readiness, and overall system productivity.
United Research & Position:
- United is well positioned to continue to be a leader in sow research, leveraging the capabilities of the DEO 1,000 sow research farm equipped with individual sow feeding & individual pig ID capabilities.
MWAS by the Numbers – Swine Related*
*Results AI generated from a review of 2026 MWAS proceedings.
Overall Conclusion
- The 2026 ASAS Midwest Meeting reinforced that the swine industry is advancing toward more data-driven, biologically grounded, and sustainability-aligned production systems.
- Across all topic areas—microbiome science, survivability prediction, precision nutrition, sow efficiency, diagnostics, and technology—one message was clear: future gains will come from integrating biological insight with predictive tools and system-level decision support.
- The convergence of nutrition, health, and data science represents the next era of competitive differentiation, and United is well-positioned to lead by expanding visibility, accelerating innovation, and aligning research investments with emerging industry
priorities.