Performance in animal production has come to mean so much more than improving growth and reproduction. Nutrition nowadays has to satisfy the demands of productivity, but also recognise future challenges. The 2008 World Nutrition Forum addressed the issues to come.
Mayrhofen, Tyrol, – in the heart of the Austrian Alps. A stunning setting, but also an appropriate one for an industry in a continual uphill struggle – to conquer the challenges of economics, legislation, of consumer uncertainty and disease, while protecting the environment.
BIOMIN’s owner and founder, Erich Erber, joined forces with extreme mountaineer, Peter Habeler, to welcome delegates and give a taste of the meeting to come. While nutrition is unlikely to encounter such physical challenges at Habeler’s dramatic ascent of Mount Everest, which he and Reinhold Messner achieved without the use of oxygen, delegates from a record 66 nations joined BIOMIN in Austria for three days to discuss the best ways to face the economic and scientific challenges ahead.
The feed of the future
In his opening presentation, Erber stressed how challenges can be overcome by the effective use of technology. From the forces of economics to the forces of nature, ‘technology will allow us to produce enough for food and feed’, he said; and satisfy the increasing demands of a growing population for animal protein.
By way of example, consultant Osler Desouzart from Brazil and Dr. Erhard Briedenhann from Afgri Trading in South Africa were invited to discuss feed supply. At the 2006 WNF, the diversion of traditional feed raw materials into biofuel supply was a serious concern; and Briedenhann remains pessimistic. The futures market, political changes, freight costs, population growth and climate change will increase problems in supplying feed materials for animal protein production. Desouzart views the issue from a different angle. Based in Brazil, he is much more optimistic about the future. ‘In the last ten years,’ he said, ‘we have made chicken accessible to the consumer. We have succeeded in reducing feed conversion ratio, mortality and slaughter age and so have increased per capita poultry consumption.’ However, the future of the food chain will have moved geographically, into ‘the hands of those who are not yet eating enough.’ Nobody’s going to die,’ Desouzart said, reassuringly, citing the expansion of Brazilian corn production. ‘If we let science prevail,’ he insisted, ‘there is no risk of starvation for the world. In every scenario, there is growth.’ This was echoed by other speakers, including Dr. Torsten Hemme, of IFCN’s Dairy Research Centre in Germany, who predicted growth in milk production in the developing world, and the US’s Dr. Randy Mitchell, who agreed that improvements in poultry production efficiency will secure future success. Dr. Casey Neill, of PIC in the US, also demonstrated the possibility of growth through science. The greatest growth however, may be in aquaculture. Sergio Nates, of the Fats and Proteins Research Foundation in the US, explained that the ability to use non-traditional feed raw ingredients, will secure efficient and sustainable future.
Going green
Whenever sustainability comes under discussion, sooner or later attention always turns to greenhouse gases, pollution and the environmental damage caused by livestock production, especially ruminants. Profesor Michael Kreuzer, of ETH-Zurich in Switzerland concentrated his attention on emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases. Feed formulation strategies and the use of additives have both shown promise. For methane and nitrate emissions, he concluded, the use of secondary plant metabolites, probiotics, enzymes or hydrogen acceptors may be realistic strategies, although, for any strategy, lifecycle assessments would still need to be undertaken. The other issue, he said, would be the question of ‘how do you get these things into the animal?’ For production systems that do not involve daily access to animals, slow release devices might need to be developed. However, whatever the strategy that science recommends, ‘farmers are unlikely to adapt unless there’s a positive economic impact or governmental force’, he said.
BOKU Vienna’s Professor Wilhelm Windisch took the problems of emissions back to basics. For nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals (using zinc and copper as examples), Windisch pointed out the simple solution of efficiency. Preventing waste will improve efficiency and reduce pollution. ‘it just becomes waste because it’s too much,’ he said. Converting plant protein into animal protein is very inefficient and so technologies that improve efficiency, such as the use of genetically modified crops with lower phytate content or improved amino acid balance would help reduce nitrogen and phosphorus emissions considerably. Reducing prophylactic zinc oxide or copper sulphate application in pig production could radically improve heavy metal emissions. ‘Such doses are a hundred times greater than requirements’ he said and ‘zinc emissions are a consequence of what we put into the feed.’ Thus, he concluded, two major measures should be taken: ‘we should put zinc oxide under veterinary control’ and ‘animal nutrition alone can control emissions. It’s just a matter of doing it.’
A crash course in gut health
Along with efficiency, animal health will be a vital ingredient of success in the future. This battle will most likely be won at intestinal level. Surprisingly, given recent advances in animal husbandry, mysteries remain in the basics. The drugs developed to treat and prevent disease have, ironically, hampered our understanding. Or, as Professor Richard Ducatelle of the University of Ghent in Belgium put it, ‘We’ve had an easy life up until quite recently. Now, there’s really a need to understand what is going on in the gut system.’
Gut health, the speakers agreed, is a delicate balance between morphology, the microbiota and the intestinal immune system. In balance, the three elements work together to protect the host animal from disease. BIOMIN’s Franz Waxenecker explained, ‘in the race against disease, the microorganisms have been sprinting ahead.’ How to beat the bugs? The use of feed additives should be just one part of a strategy that also includes effective biosecurity, diet formulation and good veterinary care. Even then, he said, ‘you have to keep on developing new products to avoid unwanted adaptations.’ Keeping up with the pathogens will be ‘an ongoing and permanent process,’ he said.
Australian consultant Robert van Barneveld took a complete diet approach, using pigs as his example. ‘What you put in the diet should optimise gut health and subsequent performance,’ he said. Successful pig nutrition, he explained, aims to ‘minimise pre- and post-weaning mortality and to maintain health throughout production.’ To achieve this,‘we need to assist development and functional morphology of the GI tract,’ he continued, echoing Ducatelle’s conclusion that new feed additives can potentially work as well as antibiotic growth promoters, but ‘you have to put more thought into what you’re doing. If you try to use them in the same way as antibiotics, you’ll be disappointed’, he warned. Einar Ringø, professor at the University of Tromsø in Norway, has a whole world of discovery ahead of him. There are technological advances to be made in applying probiotics to fish feed, for example. Ringø’s own research has shown that lactic acid bacteria could prevent cell damage caused by intestinal pathogens in salmonids. But what about in cod, or catfish or tilapia? And can they prevent the intestinal damage caused by using soybean oil in the diet instead of fish oil? Probiotics may have potential benefits in aquaculture, but as Ringø concluded, ‘the gut microbiota in fish is much more complex than we previously thought’ and, though this is something of a cliché in modern science, more research is needed.
Success in additive development
‘Development’ is a familiar word in the feed additives industry. Changes in the inputs and demands mean that the feed industry must keep ahead of the game, so that producers can do the same. Reinvestment is essential and at BIOMIN, technologies derived from nature are promising solutions. ‘We owe it to our customers to develop products at prices we can afford’, said Erber, so investing in research that leads to development is central to success. Achieving efficiency through health in all species requires feed manipulation and effective use of additives. Europe is in a post-antibiotic growth promoter era, where never before has R&D been more important. But the EU raced ahead of science in banning AGP’s and, as a number of speakers pointed out, science is having to go right back to basics in order to catch up and, more importantly, to pre-empt changes in legislation and in the microbial pathogens. The real advances are likely to be made in places with a positive attitude to technology and a determined attitude to succeed.
BIOMIN’s approach to product development is, as Erber explained, founded on a strong basis of continuing research. A practical demonstration of this was given at the World Nutrition Forum with the presentation of the 2008 B.R.A.I.N. Award . Presenting the award, Eva Maria Binder, Chief Research Officer at Erber AG, explained how the B.R.A.I.N. (BIOMIN Research and Innovation Network) programme was created to support young talented scientists in applying research and innovation to animal nutrition and health, through three different approaches –projects, internships and publication. Dr. Konstantinos (Kostas) Mountzouris, recipient of the 2008 award, gave a brief overview of his work in achieving growth promotion in poultry production through optimising inclusion level of a multi-species probiotic.
Future development needs continuing research
Elsewhere in the world, other scientists have also been investigating natural growth promoters. Science is not going to set out up the mountain of animal performance without the proper equipment. Lessons have been learned from the antibiotic resistance experience and this was clearly evident when speakers addressed the future of animal production using natural growth promoters. Professor Ioan Vacaru-Opris of the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Iasi, Romania, has been working with BIOMIN on optimising the use of acidified feed on health status and performance in poultry. Acids are used widely as feed and grain preservatives and in silage. Although their effects on digestibility and prevention of pathogen growth in feed is well documented, as growth promoters, legislation means that new trials have to be carried out under the wide range of management conditions under which they might be used. Commercial trials such as Vacaru-Opris described are therefore essential for commercial success. A wide variety of such trials were demonstrated during the World Nutrition Forum, with 82 poster presentations covering the whole spectrum of feed additive application.
Probiotics are a little further behind in the ascent to peak performance, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t effective. With live organisms, quality control is not the only issue; and the interaction between live organism, variable feed composition and live animal is more complex than with other additives. In his position at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in the US, Dr. David Nisbet has learned some valuable lessons about feed additive development and shared his experience – along with some warnings. One of the problems found with probiotic products, he said, isn’t that they don’t work, but because there are so many variables involved in application, dosage and use. However, as we have learned from our experience with antibiotics, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and there are valuable lessons that can be learned to achieve future success with probiotics. Nisbet also explored the use of chlorate in poultry diets. Chlorate inhibits pathogens that depend on nitrate reductase enzymes, by acting as a nitrate analogue. If this strategy achieves widespread use, the probiotics of the future ‘are going to have to work with them’.
Scientists working with plant extracts and phytogenics (plant-derived compounds), have already learned some valuable lessons and have already been back to the drawing board. Again, phytogenics have shown some promising results in livestock production. But Dr. Ilias Giannenas of the University of Thessaly in Greece is taking no chances. Although plant extracts have been used for 3000 years in health and medicine, their use declined to almost nothing during the 20th Century, as a result of the discovery of antibiotics – but this may be to the benefit of phytogenics use. Scientists have explored the reasons behind inconsistencies in the performance data and Giannenas explained how a clear strategy, involving characterisation, standardisation and formulation is being established, to ensure their effective and safe use for the future. ‘We have a long way to go in developing effective extraction, identification, quality control, formulation and marketing strategies’, he concluded, adding a further word or warning about risk – ‘The idea that natural means no risk is a fallacy.’
New and emerging mountains
Encouraged by the two days’ discussions, Michael Eder, CEO of BIOMIN USA, closed the meeting. ‘We have made a commitment to animal production,’ he said. ‘We haven’t come to the end of new technological developments – the best part is still ahead of us!’
As in mountain climbing, it’s common in nutrition to reach what you thought was the top only to see another, higher summit peaking through the clouds. And, as in mountaineering, for success there is no option but to keep climbing. When asked to compare his experiences of the effects of altitude on Everest with the ‘altitude’ disease ascites in broilers, Habeler had agreed that then, ‘the only thing you can do is to go down’, but as he entitled his most recent book, The Summit is the Reward, for him, success is the only option. Achieving peak performance under the challenging, competitive and sometimes unpredictable forces that shape animal production performance, sometimes it is necessary to take a step back to reach the summit.
So where are the mountains we face in animal production? Consumer demand will prioritise food safety, oil prices will demand efficiency and then we will have to protect the environment. But we have along history of developing technologies to solve problems and so solutions are under development. What we have learned along the way is that one solution will not be enough and only continual development will keep up with continual change. So, in Erber’s opening words, ‘Let’s get these concepts working and make a future for our own kids to live together.’
Ask the panels
A regular feature of the World Nutrition Forum, the panel discussions are an excellent opportunity for delegates to discuss the burning issues with the experts and for the experts to discuss it with each other. This year experts met to discuss the dual forces of nature and consumers on animal husbandry. While the more science uncovers about mycotoxins the complex the battle against them becomes, consumer concerns about food safety and sustainability have left their marks on an industry, which is rising to the challenge of responding. Both panel discussions were an excellent forum to demonstrate the needs for science and business to anticipate the changes and not to wait until they are forced to respond to them.
About BIOMIN
BIOMIN develops and produces feed additives, premixes and services with the aim to improve animal health and performance in a natural and economically viable way. Using the latest technology we promote sustainable solutions and support environmentally friendly animal production with more than 20 years experience in mycotoxin risk management and with a groundbreaking new natural growth promoting concept as well as specific solutions for dietary problems.
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