By Lauren Anderson, 2020-2023 FFAR Fellow
at North Carolina State University
As temperatures increase, it not only impacts human health but also can be a major threat to swine agriculture. Pigs are disproportionately affected by heat stress due to their physiology. They can only sweat at about two percent of the rate of the average human, so their ability to dissipate heat by evaporative cooling (through sweat) is virtually non-existent.