Transcript
Speaker: Hi everyone, welcome to Feed Strategy Podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host, Jackie Remke, Editor-in-Chief of Watts Feed Brands.
Speaker: This edition of Feed Strategy Podcast is brought to you by FeedStrategy.com.
Speaker: FeedStrategy.com is your source for the latest news and leading edge analysis of the global animal feed industry.
Speaker: Today we're joined by Rachel Hart, Global Technical Marketing Consultant at Donesco Animal Nutrition and Health,
Speaker: a business of IFF.
Speaker: She's here to talk about recent research and development and using nutrition to reduce the environmental impact of poultry production.
Speaker: Hi, Rachel.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: I'm well, thank you, Jackie.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: I'm doing great.
Speaker: Thanks for being here.
Speaker: Well, let's get right into it.
Speaker: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Speaker: So I started with a degree in animal science from the University of Nottingham and then I jumped straight into industry.
Speaker: I started working in Danisco Animal Nutrition and Health 13 years ago now and I initially joined as part of our innovation team running animal studies.
Speaker: for products approaching launch before I moved into my current team in global technical marketing.
Speaker: My focus has always been really on the phytase products in particular, but I have worked across both swine and poultry.
Speaker: And then I've also done work across a lot of our products, so our carbohydrates is as well as our enzyme and probiotic combinations.
Speaker: Right now, earlier this summer you attended the European poultry conference, correct?
Speaker: Yes, that's right.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Now, can you please share a few of the research highlights or insights that you took away from the event?
Speaker: There's so many.
Speaker: It's such a big conference and it has so many sort of topics that are covered.
Speaker: I think the sort of main ones that I sort of found to be really interesting and sort of new to me
Speaker: was a lot of the work on the gut health, so the enterococcus and the coccidio stats, all that side of thing is expanding my knowledge base beyond what it has been.
Speaker: So I find that really interesting.
Speaker: But for me, the main sort of areas that I focus on at those events are all our customer interactions, actually having that face-to-face time and time to discuss what's happening in the industry is really invaluable.
Speaker: Now, from those customer conversations, any highlights, any trends that you're noticing?
Speaker: For me, I spent a lot of my time talking about Phytase and sort of the potential of Phytase.
Speaker: I had some really good discussions around optimizing Phytase dose and sort of what benefits we can provide with full Phytase matrix applications and those sort of things.
Speaker: That's sort of, yeah, they're the take homes for me.
Speaker: So sustainability, of course, is a hot topic across industries.
Speaker: And of course, reducing the carbon footprint of animal production is a hot topic.
Speaker: How can precise feeding strategies be implemented to optimize roiler growth and performance while also maximizing nutrient excretion?
Speaker: Yeah, so...
Speaker: Enzymes play a pivotal role in that area really in sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint.
Speaker: And that all comes down to matrix application.
Speaker: So sort of the main areas of enzyme application, we have phytase, you have carbohydrates such as xylanase, and then we also have the protein, the protease section as well.
Speaker: And really they're currently underutilized I feel with matrix application.
Speaker: So for phytase, it's very successfully used for mineral matrix reduction, but we miss out on a huge chunk of the potential of phytases with energy and amino acid application for matrix values.
Speaker: And now even more so with like trace mineral application of matrix values.
Speaker: And the same with the xylanase and protease.
Speaker: Xylanase is considered an energy
Speaker: um matrix whereas the protease is just the amino acids and both of them can support both amino acid reduction and energy reduction as well which overall will help reduce phosphorus excretion and nitrogen excretion as well into the environment.
Speaker: So for those not familiar with the terminology will you please define um what matrix values mean in this context?
Speaker: Yeah, so matrix values is a common term that we use for the contribution of a nutrient that's supplied by the enzyme.
Speaker: So for phosphorus, for example, for phytase, for example, we often look at the starting point being the phosphorus contribution, which is based around the breakdown of phytate and the release of phosphorus.
Speaker: But as we look at interactions around the anti-nutrient of phytate, we see that phytate also has an impact in terms of energy utilization and amino acid utilization.
Speaker: So phytate is able to provide a contribution to your energy and to your amino acid nutrient ingredients utilization from the enzymes.
Speaker: in your overall feed formulation.
Speaker: Thank you for that.
Speaker: What strategies do you recommend for mitigating the environmental impact of phosphorus excretion in broiler production through nutritional interventions?
Speaker: Yeah, so I think one of the key things that when we talk about the role of phytase is that not all phytases are the same.
Speaker: And that to really utilize all the potential in terms of reduction of phosphorus excretion, you need a phytase that has a broad pH range.
Speaker: And that means that it's going to be highly active in the low pHs that we see in the upper GI tract.
Speaker: So sort of your pH 3, pH 3.5.
Speaker: And there, if you have the...
Speaker: the activity in those low pHs, that's when your phytase can act quickly and break down the phytate, releasing as much phosphorus as possible, but also reducing the anti-nutritional factor that phytate provides.
Speaker: And the phytate is also able to bind to protein and to calcium and trace minerals when it's in its full ester.
Speaker: So when it has six phosphorus
Speaker: phosphorus still bound to the phytate.
Speaker: And once you start to cleave that and break that down, then you're able to prevent that anti-nutritional impact.
Speaker: And I think we also need to understand the diet itself and the substrates that are specifically in the diet.
Speaker: So the recommendations that we apply for a diet that's low in phytate
Speaker: is going to be different for those diets that is high in phytate at that sort of 0.3, 0.33 level that we see in some markets.
Speaker: And we're also utilizing our understanding of limestone and limestone solubility, the calcium level in the diet, which are all key elements of how phytate interacts within the animal.
Speaker: How do you see the role of feed enzymes evolving in sustainable broiler production?
Speaker: And if you could look at that both in terms of improving nutrient utilization and of course, reducing the environmental footprint.
Speaker: I think, I think one of the key elements we really need to understand and look at is how we can combine products, how you can use all the feed additives that we have in the industry to be most effective.
Speaker: So feed ingredients can be really complex.
Speaker: There's a lot that we need to look at in terms of making sure that we have the most sustainable industry that we can.
Speaker: We need to understand substrates, like I mentioned in my previous answer, but also we need to understand what alternatives are available if we want to fully reduce carbon footprint as much as we can.
Speaker: Recently, we've run a couple of studies that have actually looked at going totally soy free.
Speaker: And that's a really complex discussion to have because soy is so stable and it's used throughout the broiler industry in feeds, but the replacements aren't perfect.
Speaker: So when you look at things like canola meal or sunflower meal, they're higher in phytate, they have higher
Speaker: and soluble and insoluble NSP levels.
Speaker: And so in order to counteract those negatives of those ingredients, you need to look at an enzyme portfolio and a feed additive portfolio as well in order to replace the nutrients that are lost from moving from soy to those alternatives and still maintain the animal's performance.
Speaker: So animal health and welfare is another aspect of the sustainability conversation.
Speaker: Will you please share your view on additive inclusions and how they are successfully addressing common health challenges, specifically in poultry, neurotic enteritis or coxidiosis?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this is really a really interesting area that
Speaker: we're only just starting to sort of see the potential in.
Speaker: So historically probiotics have kind of been seen as the animal health space.
Speaker: And we've got some really positive responses and positive effects to the conditions that you mentioned in the question.
Speaker: But we really need to start understanding the role that nutrition plays as well.
Speaker: in the behavior of the microbes and the burden that we're seeing within the industry.
Speaker: So one of the areas we've looked at has been sort of with xylanase, for example, in terms of the prebiotic effect.
Speaker: So we get a boost in the beneficial bacteria that you can see in the distal GI tract.
Speaker: Protease can reduce crude protein in the diets and reduce the risk of things like necrotic enteritis blooms.
Speaker: but that just scratches the surface.
Speaker: Recently, we've run a phytase trial where we've actually looked at improving and optimizing the bioavailability of both iron and phosphorus in feed ingredients.
Speaker: And because of that, we've been able to show that
Speaker: we are able to reduce Compilobacter in the intestinal tract of broilers.
Speaker: And that's due to the fact that iron is key for the bacterial growth.
Speaker: And for the Compilobacter in particular, they need to find a way of easily utilizing and acquiring the iron that they need.
Speaker: But with Phytase, we've shown that we can remove the iron from the trace mineral premix and also
Speaker: reduce the phosphorus that is present in the diet and in the study that we ran we actually went completely inorganic pea free.
Speaker: And what we were able to show in that study is that overall the level of iron and the phosphorus in the distal GR tract was reduced versus typical control.
Speaker: But in leading, but that reduction then further led to a reduction in compiler back to colonization
Speaker: the birds performance was still maintained.
Speaker: So yeah, overall, I think there's so much more that we can investigate for enzymes, and how they actually impact the health of the animals, and how they can support probiotics and that space.
Speaker: How is the industry balancing the need for optimal performance with the increasing demand for antibiotic free production?
Speaker: So yeah, I think this is really, as with anything in this industry, really we need a multifaceted approach.
Speaker: I think that husbandry plays a huge role in the ability to go truly antibiotic free, but also enzymes and probiotics are essential in order to optimize that process.
Speaker: Probiotics
Speaker: can promote and develop the beneficial bacterial populations, both within the environment as well as in the GI tract.
Speaker: And the enzymes are then used in that supporting role.
Speaker: Looking at 2025 and beyond, what area of sustainable roiler or, you know, more broadly livestock production do you think will see the most innovation?
Speaker: I think everything I've touched on throughout this conversation, really, soy-free, inorganic pea-free, antibiotic-free, they're all kind of in the early stages of their potential, really.
Speaker: So with all of those, we've kind of shown that it's possible.
Speaker: But now we need to be able to use our research to support people
Speaker: support the market and to give them the confidence that they can adopt these approaches and actually lead to a more sustainable industry as a whole.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Rachel, for your time.
Speaker: And thanks to you for tuning in.
