The old playbook is no longer working, Cara Haden, DVM with Pipestone, said during the Alex Hogg Memorial Lecture at the 2025 American Association of Swine Veterinarians annual meeting.
“If we want this industry to thrive moving forward, we have to become relevant to younger generations,” Haden says.
The holds true for veterinarians who serve as champions for the pigs that pork producers raise and for consumers who will influence what it means to be a champion for the pig in the future, she says.
What Does the Swine Veterinarian of Tomorrow Need?
“If we do nothing to address the needs of Millennials and Gen Zs, then we are going to have a hard time recruiting and maintaining veterinarians,” Haden says.
The future champions of pigs will be more diverse, more female, and will be represented by the Millennial and Gen Z generations.
“The mostly white, male, Baby Boomer, and Generation X veterinarians grew and shaped our industry over their careers,” Haden says. “They walked with their pig farmer clients as they made huge leaps to raise pigs inside. They were the ones who first recognized and diagnosed porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome. They helped their clients adapt to multi-site production. They developed the practice of swine population medicine, including disease eradication from large populations.”
These veterinarians eradicated pseudorabies, and helped control diseases such as rhinitis, mange, lice and Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae. They built the foundations of swine biosecurity including shower-in and shower-out, as well as air filtration.
“They are the builders of modern swine medicine and should be incredibly proud of what they built,” she says. “I am on this stage today as a part of this industry because people like Gordon Spronk, Tim Loula, Paul Armbrecht, Joe Connor, Max Rodibaugh, Tom Wetzell, Paul Yeske and many others built something compelling and meaningful.”
Over time, she adds, these practitioners shaped their industry to meet their needs and their goals.
“Our modern industry today was built by them, and it was built for them, but the truth is they are not the future of this industry anymore,” Haden says. “The future swine veterinarians are vastly different and will need the opportunity to adapt and change the industry to meet their needs.”
She believes this change needs to come sooner rather than later for the health of the industry.
Last year in the Alex Hogg Memorial Lecture, Chris Rademacher, DVM and associate director of the Iowa Pork Industry Center, shared a disturbing trend of veterinarians leaving the pork industry. In the first phase of his research, his team looked at veterinarians leaving swine medicine entirely.
Those leaving the swine veterinary industry are young. They reported travel, work life balance, and an inability to “disconnect” from work as reasons for leaving. Other factors that weren’t supportive included the solitary nature of the job, lack of advancement opportunities, and gender-related challenges.
In phase two, Rademacher explored those leaving practice but who remained in the swine industry. They tended to be older veterinarians with more than 10 years of experience. Again, work life balance and an inability to disconnect were major factors for leaving practice.
Haden suggests the industry consider how telemedicine, greater utilization of veterinary technicians and technology could help veterinarians achieve greater work-life balance and avoid burnout.
“The industry today was not built or shaped by the next generation of veterinarians, and so unsurprisingly, it does not meet their needs,” Haden says. “One of the best ways to shape our industry to fit the next generation, is to give leadership of our industry to the next generation.”
She challenged the older generation to evaluate how they are transitioning leadership.
“What young veterinarians on your team are ready for leadership? If they are not ready, what role can you play in developing and coaching them?” she asks.
She also challenged the younger generation to not leave.
“Stay in this profession and be a part of the change you want to see happen,” Haden urges. “Engage in these conversations. Bring forward solutions. Be ready to step up and lead.”
Who Will Influence Swine Veterinarians in the Future?
For years, the swine industry has been shaped around production. Efforts have focused on improved performance with the goal of reducing the cost of producing pork.
“When markets experience oversupply, we rely on exports and reduced pricing to move additional pork. However, the most recent downturn in the market was different,” Haden points out. “With Generation X and Baby Boomer consumers, the model of focusing on production and pushing extra pork to the consumer via reduction in cost worked well. Unfortunately, Millennials and Gen Z are hugely different generations. The old playbook is not working to increase pork consumption in these individuals.”
A recent National Pork Board market study sought to understand and segment pork consumers, she shares. Millennials consume significantly less pork compared to Baby Boomers. And even more concerning, the consumption drops even further when comparing Gen Z to Millennials.
“The production focused approach of our industry is no longer a relevant approach for the modern consumer,” she says. “Instead, our industry must make a shift to a consumer-centered industry.”
The National Pork Board will introduce a new consumer centered campaign to pig farmers at National Pork Industry Forum. Later in the year it will launch in significant pork markets, including California.
“Today we are sitting in a room in California, and I am telling you that our industry needs to shift to focus on the needs and wants of the Californian consumer,” Haden says. “Our industry will not thrive if we cannot win over the Millennial and Gen Z consumers of California. At the exact same time, I am aware that the Californian consumer has no idea how food is produced in the U.S. They are in no way qualified to determine how pigs are raised.”
Bridge the Gap
So how does the pork industry move forward with both things being true?
“What the swine industry needs are intelligent, highly educated professionals, with experience and expertise that can stand in this gap. People that can take what the consumer says they want, and work to find solutions that actually improve the welfare of the pig, while at the same time being executable by pig farmers,” she says. “We need people with critical thinking skills and the ability to plan and execute research trials. We need people with training in pig behavior and welfare. We need people that have a seat at the table to advise and assist pig farmers. We need the people in this room, swine veterinarians, to stand in the gap.”
Haden says her experience on social media, especially TikTok, has opened her eyes to public perception of the pork industry.
“I grew up in the swine industry, so raising sows on concrete seemed very normal and unproblematic to me,” she says. “Then I posted to social media and experienced many comments regarding the viewers’ concerns for pig comfort when being raised on concrete. Because of the constant comments, I became more aware of stiff sows and sows looking painful when standing up as I was filming for videos.”
She found herself struggling with how to respond to some of the direct comments regarding sow lameness.
“I found myself in a gap. The public was pointing out a problem, sow discomfort and lameness on concrete, for which I did not have a solution,” Haden says. “This led to me working with rubber flooring and eventually installing it in a barn for a pilot project.”
The project’s success led to Pipestone, a rubber flooring company and three different universities working together to apply for a National Pork Board grant. That grant was funded, and the project started collecting data on rubber flooring in November of 2024.
“This rubber flooring project is a fitting example of finding a potential solution that may improve the experience of the pig, may improve health and production on farm, and may improve the public perception of how pigs are raised,” she says. “If this project works out, it is a win for pigs, producers and consumers.”
Veterinarians have always been focused on excellent production practices for pigs, she says. But she called them to stand in the gap between producers and consumers.
“As veterinarians we were in the trenches focusing on health and disease elimination and all the legitimate health issues that take up our precious time,” Haden says. “The voters in California were focused on freedom of movement for the sows. No one stood in the gap to bring solutions forward that would work for both the producers, the pigs, and the people of California. So, the people of California wrote the solution and now we follow their guidelines because we need to sell pork in their state. We do not have to wait for the next Proposition 12.”
Act Now
Haden encourages veterinarians to approach every barn visit like there’s a Gen Z from California in the barn with them. Of course it’s important to look at health from a vaccine, antibiotic and anti-inflammatories standpoint. Conversations about ventilation and markets are always important. But she also recommends additional discussion about timely euthanasia, housing, pain control and individual pig care – things consumers are interested in hearing more about.
“Address the things they would care about like pain control at castration and tail docking or farrowing and lactating sow housing,” Haden says.
It’s also important for people in the industry to consider the way they talk about consumers. Stop saying, “They are crazy people. They have no idea what we do. They know nothing about our industry,” she says. Instead, she recommends a different narrative.
“Start to say, ‘These topics matter to pork consumers and so they should matter to me,’” Haden says. “Or think about this, ‘If this helps our image as an industry, we should really consider what this could look like.’”
