Journal of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine

Historically, vitamin C was discovered as a result of scurvy disease. Vitamin C deficiency or scurvy is a very old disease of civilization. In the past, it was a very difficult problem when humans were under conditions where they could not have access to either fresh fruit or vegetables and incidences of scurvy were very common. Later, it became obvious that humans would not develop scurvy if they consumed a small amount of fresh vegetables or fruits or even drank some citrus juice. Between 1907 and 1912, Holst and Frohlich in Norway demonstrated that scurvy could be produced in the guinea pig and could also be cured by feeding various fresh vegetables and fruit; however, that factor or active ingredient was destroyed by heat and drying. These observations therefore confirmed earlier opinions obtained from observations in humans. More importantly, the latter observations thus provided a laboratory animal model for the study of scurvy. Consequently, this resulted in the isolation of vitamin C also known as ascorbic acid (AA) in 1933. Following its discovery and isolation, vitamin C has been shown not to be a cure for scurvy only but has been shown to be very useful in the overall health of laboratory and domesticated animals, such as pigs. It has been implicated in being useful in pig production, especially during stress. This paper examined some of the production areas of vitamin C needs and its ameliorative capacity in serving as a succour to the pig during stress. There are many areas of pig production that AA plays vital functions. Some of the areas AA is involved in alleviating stress are: in the reproductive capacity of the pig, up-regulating the pig's immune system as well as improving the quality of pork for better value capture. Here, it is demonstrated that AA can be used in enhancing the overall productive indices in the pig during stress.