For many scientists, it may take a decade or longer to find their niche, and that search can take them to several different locales. But for Gary Cromwell, the job fit was immediate in what has turned out to be a lifelong career at the University of Kentucky.

Come June, Cromwell will have amassed 40 years in a career of research and teaching swine nutrition in the Animal Sciences Department at the Lexington, KY, university.

He received his bachelor's degree of science in agriculture education from Kansas State University in 1960, and then worked for the first four years of his career as a vocational agriculture instructor in Kansas.

Then he attended Purdue University, where he received his master's degree in animal nutrition in 1965, followed by his PhD in animal nutrition (with a focus on swine) from Purdue University in 1967.

For the Salina, KS, native, the move to the University of Kentucky proved to be a good fit. He accepted an assistant professorship position, with the idea that he would probably stay for a few years before heading back to his native Kansas.

But he and his wife and three children quickly fell in love with the Blue Grass state, and the position was exactly what Cromwell wanted.

“I had an offer from Kentucky and wanted to teach at the college level, and took this position and just never left,” Cromwell recalls.

Cromwell's plate has been full. Responsibilities include:

• Leader of the Swine Research Group at the University of Kentucky;

• Actively involved in swine nutrition research and teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in swine nutrition and management;

• Coordinator of the Feed Processing Center for the Animal Science Department; and

• Since 2001, served in a shared faculty appointment (20%) with Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, the division of USDA that oversees federal research funding to university experiment stations.

During his career, Cromwell's research has run the gamut: refining the estimates of amino acid and mineral requirements of swine; determining the bioavailability of minerals in feedstuffs for pigs and chicks; evaluating sources and high levels of copper as growth promotants for young pigs; evaluating novel feed ingredients in starter and grow-finish diets; evaluating the efficacy of carcass-enhancing agents; assessing feedstuff variability; determining the nutritional value of genetically enhanced grains, oilseed meals and other feedstuffs for pigs and chicks; and more recently, evaluating phytase and other dietary manipulations to reduce nutrient pollution and odor in the environment.

But one of his main areas of emphasis through the years has been determining the efficacy and safety of feed additives, specifically antibiotics, for swine.

In that regard, Cromwell has served as a spokesman for the swine industry in defending the value of feeding antibiotics to pigs.

“Forty years ago when I started, antibiotics were under pressure, and many thought that we were going to lose antibiotics. Well, that didn't happen. But there probably is more pressure today than there ever has been.

“But the facts are still there that antibiotic resistance hasn't really changed that much. A lot of the problems that we see in humans, some try to tie to antibiotic use in animals, but it hasn't been documented,” Cromwell says.

In fact, studies have shown animals that have not been fed any antibiotics at all still have a fairly high level of resistance. A case in point was the University of Kentucky's own swine herd at Princeton, which carried a fairly high level of resistance to antibiotics, despite the fact that it was never fed or treated with antibiotics during the final 25 years of its existence, he explains.

Cromwell wonders if a complete ban on antibiotics would have much, if any, effect on resistance levels. Recent information from Europe indicates that some types of resistance in certain microorganisms have actually increased since the EU instituted a ban on the use of antibiotics as feed additives.

For his part, Cromwell has certainly been a prolific researcher and leader in his field. Some of his activities include:

• Chairing the National Research Council's (NRC) Committee on Animal Nutrition from 1979 to 2002;

• Chairing an NRC subcommittee that prepared the 10th edition of Nutrient Requirements of Swine, the most widely used publication on swine nutrition in the world (last published in 1998);

• Chairing for many years the Federation of Animal Science Society (FASS) Food Safety, Animal Health and Animal Drugs Committee and its forerunner, the American Society of Animal Science Regulatory Agencies Committee;

• Serving as non-ruminant section editor for the Journal of Animal Science; and

• Serving as president of the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) in 1989-1990.

Cromwell was honored by the ASAS in 2002 with the Morrison award, the organization's most distinguished research award. Previously, he received two other ASAS awards, the American Feed Industry Association Nutrition Award and the Animal Industry Service Award. He was also named an ASAS Fellow in 2003.

In 2005, he was the recipient of the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Outstanding Faculty Award for graduate student training. During his career, he has directed or co-directed the training of 65 graduate students in swine nutrition.

He was honored by Purdue University's Animal Sciences Department in 2003 as a distinguished alumnus for lifetime achievement.

In all, Cromwell has published over 150 refereed journal papers, more than 800 scientific abstracts, symposium papers and technical papers and 23 book chapters.

Cromwell says that one of the greatest pleasures in his academic life has been the training of graduate students. Many of these have gone on to successful careers in academia or as nutritionists in the feed industry.

Cromwell, 68, says a few of his former graduate students are already retired. But he's still having too much fun to think about retiring.

Instead, he plans to continue research and teaching, at least for a few more years. He has a special goal of completing the publication of results of research studies in technical journals which, to date, have only appeared as abstract reports.

Devotion to his job stems from his parents and peers. His father, Harold, taught him the value of hard work and always continuing to learn. Bill Smith, his high school vo-ag teacher, and Don Good, livestock judging coach at Kansas State University, taught him appreciation for agriculture, and Virgil Hayes, retired animal scientist from the University of Kentucky, was instrumental early on in helping a young assistant professor stay on the right track and apply scientific principles to research endeavors.

Times have changed, but Cromwell is adapting to the new challenges.

On the research side, grants are fewer and farther between, and nutritional challenges have definitely escalated as the industry ramps up production numbers.

“We wean nearly twice as many pigs as we did years ago, and pigs are weaned at much younger ages. Pigs now reach 40 lb. in six weeks. It used to be if you had an 8-9-week-old pig weigh 40 lb., you were doing pretty good. And market weights have escalated from 180-220 lb. to an average of about 270 lb. Pigs at that weight can still be quite lean.”

There are also new teaching challenges. Graduate students come armed with more technical expertise, but fewer roots in agriculture. Many of them now are women, virtually the polar opposite of decades earlier. And many more applicants today are international students.

But Cromwell accepts the teaching challenge, and hopes he can help keep the graduate degree program for swine nutrition afloat for a few more years.

Maybe then he will comply with his family's wishes that he retire and more fervently pursue other passions such as spending more time with his grandchildren, and refining his skills in woodworking and golf.
— Joe Vansickle, Senior Editor

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