The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou. Click below to hear the full audio:

Tom:            I'm talking with Rodolphe Barrangou, professor in the department of food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences at North Carolina State University. Dr. Barrangou is engaged in probiotics research at the university, focusing on the evolution and functions of CRISPR-Cas System and applications in bacteria used in food manufacturing. We thank you so much for joining us.

Rodolphe:     Thank you for having me.

Tom:            First, if you would indulge us with a quick primer: What is CRISPR-Cas9 technology?

Rodolphe:     In nature, CRISPR (short, repetitive sequences in a palindromic repeat) is the adaptive immune system in bacteria. What scientists have done is repurpose the molecular machines from this primitive immune system in bacteria and turned that into a technology used for genome editing.

                    Essentially, those molecular machines are equivalent to scalpels or razors that can specifically, efficiently and accurately target DNA and cut it. What happens when you cut DNA is that the endogenous DNA-repair pathways come in and repair the DNA cut. Precisely at the point of the cut of that DNA, the repair pathway will change the DNA sequence. This is why it's called genome editing: you are rewriting, you are altering, you are changing the DNA code precisely at the site of the cut, which means now you can rewrite any genome you want, any way you want.

Tom:            Can this be done in real time in living organisms?

Rodolphe:     This can be done across the tree of life. You can do that in primitive things like bacteria or viruses or yeast, small organisms and microorganisms, and you can do that in any type of cell in which you can deliver DNA. We can talk about crops, plants, we can talk about animals, and we can talk about mammals like humans.

Tom:            Let's imagine we might want to enhance the genetic code of crops or livestock or even people. Did you snip this unwanted gene out in a crop animal or person and replace it with a good [one]? If you could walk us through how a CRISPR change is made in a living being.

Rodolphe:     If you think of DNA as the book of life, you can do a [Microsoft] Word version of genetics. You can do “[control]+F” and look for any sequence you want.

                    Let's say there is a faulty gene that you don't like in a patient, or a trait you don't like in a particular plant or an animal. You can look for the sequence, find it and cut it. Once you cut it, you can do the edits that you want. You can remove it and take it out. You can replace it with another variant, another version, another allele.

                    If you think you have a typo, for example, in your genetic code, you can correct that typo to the right version, or you can actually take a word out — or take a whole sentence out, or add a word or add a sentence — which means that you don't just change [the] gene. You can take out a gene, you can add a gene. CRISPR technologies are sophisticated enough to not just alter the genetic writing but also the punctuation. You can change how loud genes are expressed; you can make them very quiet or you can make them very loud. You can change the structure of DNA as well. So, it's not just changing the letters, per se — it's changing the punctuation and the narration of that genetic code.

Tom:            Can these edited genes be passed down through generations?

Rodolphe:     It depends on what you edit. In humans, for example — or with animals — you can just alter cells that are in tissues and organs throughout the body that you don't pass on. Sometimes, even just a portion of the patient, or just one organ in the animal or one particular tissue type in the plant, will be altered depending on how you deliver it.

                    Alternatively, you can alter DNA at the embryonic stage during the reproduction process, in vivo or in vitro, and then you can change all the cells in an organism, which means that the next generation thereof will carry those changes. So, you can do either/or, or you can do both.

Tom:            This is really profound. If I can walk you back a little bit in time to when you first heard about this and began to investigate it, it must have been mind-blowing.

Rodolphe:     Actually, I'm one of the few people in the world who worked on CRISPR long before it was famous. My first CRISPR pattern dates all the way back to 2004, at the dark ages or the middle ages of the prehistoric era for CRISPR. At the time, people really didn't care much about what CRISPR was or how it worked or what it did in nature. That being said, in the past five years, we've seen a transformative, disruptive evolution of that technology, because the CRISPR science — again, which, in nature, is an adaptive immune system in bacteria that enables them to cut DNA or viruses and invasive sequences — has been repurposed for a different role to edit the DNA of pretty much any species or organism you can think of. This is where it all comes from.

                    This is where the mind-boggling "implications" come into play, because now, it's not just a cool idiosyncratic biological phenomenon, it is a very powerful technology and a very enabling technology that doesn't just enable scientists in academia to do those things, but pretty much any average-level Ph.D. geneticist across the world can tinker with the DNA of the organism they're interested in.

                    There are tremendous business implications, commercial implications, but also societal implications and ethical implications, with regards to how this powerful technology should or should not be used, and how it should or should not be regulated and should or should not be harnessed.

Tom:            That's where I wanted to go with the conversation. Technology seems to have a way of staying way ahead of regulation. What's your guess on this: is regulation going to catch up quickly, or is the ethical debate and regulatory debate still in its infancy?

Rodolphe:     It's still relatively early. Science — especially when it's disruptive and enabling and cool and powerful will outpace the progress of regulation and the engagement of productive dialogue with society, consumers, the government and with regulatory agencies. This is what I call “the highway of science.”

                    Essentially, as you build that highway and you develop the next frontier of the path ahead, you never start with the guardrails; you build the road first. There's no speed limit at the very edge, there are no signs, there’s no control. This is what scientists do — they are at the cutting-edge of technology. You have to trust that the regulations, agencies and governments are doing their jobs and their due diligence.

                    There's a little bit of a delay between the time you build the road and when you can open it up to the public, but those guardrails do come up. They are being built for CRISPR. They have been expended upon a foundation of genetic engineering and gene modification that has existed since the 70s.

                    There are a lot of people currently at the table who are engaging in a wise, patient, careful, mindful — but also, perhaps, passionate — debate about what we should or shouldn't do. I think this is one of those cases where there is so much at stake that you have to be patient and make sure that you don't rush in to make too quick of a decision — or put too big a guardrail, speed bump or speed limit. That you mindfully assess the various applications of CRISPR — whether they're in humans for therapeutics, ag to feed the world or animals for next-generation breeding. There are different implications for different industries and different groups of stakeholders.

Tom:            Let's bring it around to ag feeding the world. Not only is the population expanding exponentially, so are the middle classes of many developing countries out there. That implies steadily increasing consumer demand for food products. Because of that, it's estimated that farmers will need to grow a lot more food on the same amount of land and with increasingly limited water resources to feed everyone. How might CRISPR become part of the solution to all that?

Rodolphe:     I would argue that the food gap lying ahead of us is tremendous and very challenging. We cannot keep increasing the yields or the quality or the sustainability of our food supply at the rate we're doing it right now, because the population is increasing faster, and we can address that increasing demand. As you mentioned, people spend an increasing amount of their expendable income in foods, notably protein sources and healthier food. This is where plants come in.

                    We are in a day and age where challenges with regards to the amount of arable land is not increasing; if anything, it's decreasing, to some extent. Water supply is ever-increasingly challenging. The forecasts over the next couple of decades look very dire and concerning. Enter CRISPR to the rescue, to some extent, and we now have a technology that will enable us to accelerate and improve the ease and speed with which we can generate and breed those next-generation crops and animals to have not just better yields but also better health, better traits, better sustainability, and make responsible and efficient use of our water supply and our soil as well.

Tom:            What about public perceptions? As recently as 2016, there was a survey by Pew Research that found 39 percent of US adults believe foods made from GMO crops, as distinguished from CRISPR-influenced crops, are not as healthy as conventional versions. Even if CRISPR technology is shown to be capable of saving the planet from starvation, do you think the public will come around to accepting it?

Rodolphe:     To me, the science part has become the easy part. It used to be very difficult to do those scientific advancements and technology development and democratizing them. CRISPR has shown to be a very convenient — not very cumbersome — very powerful technology. The science is not the bottleneck anymore. We live in an age where consumers are concerned more and more about their health, about their food, about food safety and food security, where it comes from, what it consists of and what it can do for their health or not. How can we enable them to be healthier, or how we will tip the balance toward a less copacetic medical condition?

                    We are in an age where, sadly enough, much of the general public doesn't have the education and intimacy they need to truly understand big science and deep science. When we talk about genetics, when we talk about genomics, when we talk about engineering and editing, DNA cutting and DNA repair, there are many ways to harness those technologies — to repurpose the natural ability of some of those organisms to correct their DNA sequences and change them in natural ways.We're not talking about transgenics, we're not talking about GMOs, we're not talking about “Frankenfood.” We're talking about harnessing nature's power to change DNA, sometimes back to what it is in nature, to a very desirable, broadly-distributed, bio-diverse version. It's hard to explain. It's hard to showcase. It's hard to disseminate. It's hard to communicate.

                    I think the challenge moving ahead for a lot of the breeders — whether you breed plants, whether you breed microbes and engineer them and develop them and alter them, or whether you breed animals —  is, really, to explain to society how the science works, how the technology functions and, then, showcase the benefits that it provides, not just from a financial standpoint but from a sustainability standpoint. The ag world in general, and the plant world in particular, suffer from this lack of trust. There's a perceived lack of transparency. There are concerns from society about stewardship.

                    Being a scientist, working at a state institution — a land-grant university — part of my role is to educate the public and carry out the mission of a land-grant institution that wants to feed the world and make people healthier and better, make food more available, more sustainable. Science is there to create solutions more so than to create problems. The difficulty is not just to create products and deliver them, but to illustrate that we have all those benefits from yield, pest management and water and land usage. Resource allocations are such that we will — it's a question of “when,” not “if”— be able to use those technologies to feed the world, and not just feed the people who can afford it, but perhaps feed the people who need it the most and are in the most dire situation, with regards to their food supply.

Tom:            The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently officially announced that certain gene-edited plants can be designed, cultivated and sold free from regulation, that as long as a genetic alteration could have naturally been bred in a plant, it won't be regulated. If you want to add in genes from distant species, you still have to jump through hoops. What sorts of applications of CRISPR technology do you envision as a result of that USDA decision?

Rodolphe:     I think the decision made and communicated by the USDA, especially our Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, is fantastic. It is very momentous. It is very enabling. It is a good illustration of how science-based decisions can occur with regulatory agencies. Globally, I quite look forward to other regulatory agencies across the planet embracing this kind of approach and condoning this kind of decision. I think in terms of closing the food gap, one underappreciated, easy solution is preventing food waste — food spoilage.

                    There are great examples already published of how we can use CRISPR to alter, for example, browning in mushrooms. If you think of the white button mushroom, left in the open air for too long, this very attractive whiteness in the visual appeal of the mushroom will go away and be replaced with brown. It doesn’t look as appetizing. It doesn’t look as compelling. It doesn’t look as tasty. People will throw away their food. Up to about 30 percent of all the food produced is wasted at the consumer level. People buy it, people spend money on it, people have it in their fridge, and they don't consume it for a variety of reasons.

                    Again, CRISPR to the rescue! We can go into the gene responsible for browning and let nature change the sequence to "knock it out" and prevent browning in mushrooms, essentially extending the visual appeal of produce for the consumer that already bought it. You can think of doing the same in apples. A browning apple is perfectly tasty, maybe a little sweeter and better. Rather than put it in a pie, you can keep it out in the open. You can cut it and slice it and still prevent browning. The chance that somebody is going to consume it is higher when you do that.

                    There are hundreds of those examples where you think of browning lettuce and others like this, whereby we can alter, naturally, some of the genetic contents of those plant species to extend their shelf life and their consumption.

Tom:            What's happening in the CRISPR “industry,” if you will, or at least in the research side of CRISPR, in recent years, even in recent months? Has it been taking off exponentially?

Rodolphe:     The rise and the unleashing of the CRISPR craze, quantitatively, is unbelievable. In terms of cost and use, you can get a CRISPR construct for $65 from not-for-profit organizations like Addgene and have it shipped to you overnight. It is very accessible and is very affordable. The number of scientists who are now part of the CRISPR community has grown exponentially in the last few years. Again, organizations like Addgene have been able to ship CRISPR material and now have CRISPR biological and genetic contracts in the hundreds of thousands.

Tom:            Wow.

Rodolphe:     So, we have hundreds of thousands of labs around the world and scientists around the world that have that tool in their hand. They're very creative, they're very productive, they're very passionate; they're very excited about the potential uses and applications of that technology. At the same time, our understanding scientifically of CRISPR is, likewise, increasing exponentially. Within a decade, we went from a literature that was only a couple dozen articles to a paper published every month, to a paper published every week — now, to ten papers published every day.

                    Our understanding of the technology and our enhancement of that technology — which is still only five years old, in its infancy — is moving along at a scientific pace that is unprecedented. At the same time, this CRISPR craze is being fueled by wise, veteran and deep-pocketed investors who are investing in that technology and literally putting hundreds of millions of dollars into this revolutionary technology. We've seen public IPOs (initial public offerings) of CRISPR companies whose very purpose is to use the technology to cure disease. We're now seeing the second generation of CRISPR companies more in the ag space coming in to breed plants and breed animals. I think this is just the beginning.

Tom:            How long before we'll be eating CRISPR produce?

Rodolphe:     CRISPR is already present in about half the bacteria in the world. We already eat CRISPR on a regular basis. If you eat cheese, if you eat yogurt, if you eat fermented foods, CRISPR-Cas systems already inhabit your gut. They're also in the bacteria that inhabit our skin and vigorous epithelia in our environment. So, they're in our food, they're in our body, they're all around. We already have a lot of industrial applications — notably, in the dairy industry — where fermented yogurt and fermented cheese have been manufactured using CRISPR, enhanced in natural ways with starter cultures that turn and ferment milk into yogurt or cheese.

                    I mentioned the white button mushroom. There's also waxy corn and dozens of other produce species that have already been altered in the lab using CRISPR technologies and are awaiting global green lights across the world to be commercialized. Now that we have the USDA's condoning of certain uses of CRISPR technologies and certain crops, in very short order, we'll do that.

                    Now, we live in a world where biohackers have access to those things as well. We know people are doing CRISPR kale and CRISPR lettuce — “hipster” food that is genetically altered. It's not a question of if or, really, a question of when; it's how quickly this will take over our food supply chain.

Tom:            Let's bring this over to the human side just for a second. One of the most exciting things I've heard of was at TED 2018 in Vancouver. Luhan Yang, a chief scientific officer at eGenesis, said that scientists using CRISPR to edit pig organs so they'll be accepted by humans think a breakthrough is coming that will end the organ donation waiting list, which is profound! Do you share her assessment?

Rodolphe:     Absolutely. First of all, she's fantastic. She's a very smart, very driven and motivated — not just a scientist, but a CEO of a powerful company now. She's been advised by the great George Church. She's putting that technology to good use, literally humanizing pigs to be able to grow human tissue. She’s on a quest to put an end to the organ donor list shortcomings, delays and loss of life. It’s a tremendous opportunity to alleviate pain and suffering, and to correct diseases in a very diversified group of patients that are afflicted by a number of different diseases that are problematic and life-threatening.

                    Again, they are moving at a pace that is mind-boggling. I would say they're more than halfway to achieving their goal in a very short amount of time. They're well-equipped, they're well-funded, they are driven, and they have all the ingredients you need to be successful. I think the scientific hurdles are coming down one at a time. The question will be how regulators will manage this. How will the FDA manage that? How ready or equipped are they or not, today, to do it? And then, eventually, will the consumers and patients accept it? If we've learned anything from the history of medicine, it is that, when it comes to life or death, when it comes to curing diseases, patients faced with death will make the call. We have these adult medical consent forms. If you ask for things to be done to you, and your alternative is not being here anymore, I would predict that the patients will embrace those technologies when the time comes.

Tom:            Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, a professor in the department of food, bioprocessing, and nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University.

Rodolphe:     Thank you.

Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou appeared on the power-packed mainstage of ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE18). 

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The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Ryan Martin (no relation) of the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation. Click below to hear the full interview:

Tom:                I'm talking with Martin Ryan, technical support manager at Glanbia Agribusiness in County Tipperary, Ireland. Mr. Ryan is an award-winning pedigree cattle breeder and exhibitor, a past president of the Irish Charolais Cattle Society and is a current board member of the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation. He joins us to talk about what can be accomplished when various interests work together toward a common goal. We thank you for joining us, Martin.

Martin:            Thank you very much.

Tom:                Tell us about the centralized database that's been created by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation. What's it called?

 Martin:           ICBF is the short acronym we use for it. It's the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation. I think it goes back to 1998 when a lot of small-breed societies were all doing various genetic improvement programs and trying to do their own thing. We had a vision to create our centralized database, which would bring economies of scale, first of all, and actually improve the reliability by getting everybody to work together. And we envisaged bringing together not just the breeders, but also the processors, the livestock markets, the processing factories — right through the chain — artificial insemination (AI) organizations, milk recording, you name it. We wanted to get them all involved.

Tom:                So, this actually began in the 90s?

Martin:            In 1998, the idea took hold, and by the year 2000, we had a federation put together and created, basically, a co-op where all the interested parties took a shareholding, and that’s how they are represented today.

Tom:                And, since then, there's been quite a revolution in digital technology — must have changed things considerably.

Martin:            Absolutely, but fundamentally, I think at the start, we had at least five decades of good registration information from birth. Every calf was tagged at birth. We had quite a lot of their ancestry information, so that formed the basis of the database. What we didn’t have was the processes for pulling together all the issues like milk recording, linear scoring, weight records from animals being slaughtered, confirmation scores, fat scores, daily live weight gain — all that good information. So that's really what we set out to achieve: put all that information together in one place.

Tom:                Is that what makes the system unique, or are there more attributes that do that?

Martin:            I think that was how it set itself apart from everything else, beginning from day one. So, every time an animal moves in Ireland, it is captured in the database. If it goes to a livestock market, its weight on that day is transferred back to the database, along with the price it brought. If it's an animal that's slaughtered in a processing plant, on that day, its carcass weight, its carcass confirmation and its fat score are all transferred back into the database. Of course, we have the sires of those animals as well. So, all that information — or, indeed, on the dairy side, if it’s milk recording — all that comes back into the database, which gives us a very simple model. We have the data coming from everywhere, then you have a lot of on-farm recording programs as well, which transfers back-data into the database. It gives us a powerful tool for creating genetic evaluations.

Tom:                And how many users are there?

Martin:            We have at least 70,000 people that are working in the system between dairy and beef farmers. You could say about 80 percent of all active farmers are very involved in the database. Everybody gets their evaluations from there. We have, on breed society level, six dairy breeds and fourteen beef breeds completely involved. Every processor is involved — every milk processor, as well as beef processors. Every livestock market is involved. So, it's a very complete, comprehensive system that captures data at every level.

Tom:                There can be competitive considerations to sharing data, but I understand there's a great deal of collaboration in this system. Is competitiveness an issue?

Martin:            Oh, absolutely. It’s not the case today, but I think at the very outset there would have been a lot of concern by individual breed societies that they were putting information into a central repository and wondered, "How safe is that? Can I get it back and have it become my own again? What responsibilities do I have, and are we safe to share that information? Are we allowed to share it?”

                        So, there was a lot of concern initially, and that's why it probably took two years to become incorporated and get to where we are now. But, today, people don’t see any alternative.

Tom:                A great deal of data comes in, and then it’s analyzed and reshared back with the users?

Martin:            Yes, the system is completely open, so any individual farmer can go on and look at his own herd. He'll get reports every week, if he wishes. Every week, the database shares all the registration data and AI information that came in, so you can see how many cows are milk-recorded or how many cows were inseminated during the week, for example. So, it's completely open in that regard. You can check any animal.

                        If you're a farmer looking for stock bull, you can go into the bull search, which has a lot of parameters. You can set your parameters, even including the distance from where you live, as well as calving years, et cetera, and select a bull accordingly.

Tom:                Is any training required to use the system?

Martin:            We provide a lot of webinars both to the breed societies and to individual farmers for using the system, but it's very intuitive because people understand the terminology quite well.

Tom:                “Data reliability” is a term that might seem obvious, but what is it and why is it important?

Martin:            Well, at the very outset, I think data reliability would have been considered relatively poor because you didn’t have a lot of information. To improve that data reliability, I suppose, the first thing is we had to increase the usage. As soon as more and more people submitted data, that completed it.

                        We also introduced the system among beef farmers whereby there is some benefit to putting in the data themselves. Out of the 50,000 beef producers, over 50 percent of them — and particularly the larger ones — joined up immediately. That gave us a big volume of data going into the system to improve that reliability. Then, along came things like genomics, where we're sampling up to 35,000 cattle every week genomically, and that has improved the reliability substantially as well. On the AI side, we have over 50 billion SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in the system, which gives us enormous reliability.

Tom:                Is this a global model?

Martin:            I think it's a global model. I suppose every country doesn’t necessarily work the same. It's highly unique to have every piece of the industry sharing information together. That sharing has benefited dairy farmers to the tune of €150 million per year. It's about a hundred and seventy million dollars in today's language. In a small country, it's nothing to sneeze at.

                        On the beef side, the average beef carcass has gained at least €70 per head, so that's quite significant. On the replacement index side, things have been quite a bit slower because people focus initially on the slaughter part, but today, that is increasing as well. In the last year alone, [it] has increased by about €15 per animal.

Tom:                Is the system continuing to be developed, and what is yet to be achieved?

Martin:            I think the main part that will give us further momentum in the future is the genomics component. We use 54K SNP, which is a very high level of intensity of data. From that, we can pick up quite a lot of other issues in the genome, including genetic defects and so on. I think, down the road, we'll get to gene editing, ultimately.

Tom:                Martin Ryan is technical support manager at Glanbia Agribusiness. We thank you so much for being with us.

Martin:            Thank you very much. Pleasure.

Ryan Martin spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference. Don't miss another game-changing idea from the beef industry. Join the world's thought-leaders and experts at ONE19. Learn more here. 

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Jack Rodenburg. Click below to listen to the full interview:

Tom:            After 34 years in dairy extension, Jack Rodenburg started DairyLogix Consulting, focusing on designing dairy barns for robotic milking, and lectures on robotics and other dairy automation and precision technologies. Jack is a certified CowSignals trainer and has co-authored three books in the popular CowSignals series, entitled Robotic Milking: Building for the Cow and Feeding Signals, with Dr. Jan Hulsen. He joins us to talk about robotics on the farm. Thanks for being with us, Jack.

Jack:            Thank you. Happy to be here.

Tom:            It's often assumed that agriculture is averse to innovation and is no place for things like robots and artificial intelligence and such. But isn't it true that agriculture was one of the first major industries to adopt technology as a means of boosting its productivity?

Jack:            Oh, absolutely. I think that farmers have always been interested in ways to reduce labor and ways to make them more efficient in terms of data collection and so on.

Tom:            Okay. So, coming up to “year now,” what technological developments today would you say are having the biggest impact on dairy farming?

Jack:            Well, I think that there's an awful lot happening. In fact, I call it a “quiet revolution” in the kind of technology that farmers are picking up on. What's fairly new is robotics in areas such as milking and feed delivery and, really, every aspect of the dairy farming operation.

Tom:            How exactly do robotics replace mechanization?

Jack:            Well, in the past, what we have traditionally done is found ways to make the man more productive by putting him on a bigger machine. We've added automation to our milking parlors so that one man can milk 100 cows an hour instead of 60 cows an hour. What robots do is take the man right out of the equation. So that totally changes the dynamics of labor efficiency because, essentially, we end up just requiring people for the management and the decision-making function, because the labor component in something like milking is done entirely by the machine.

Tom:            That really addresses a couple of contemporary problems, not only the cost but the availability of labor, correct?

Jack:            Yes, I think it's getting harder and harder in every jurisdiction in the developed world to find good, quality labor for a reasonable price. One of the things that robotics does is that it takes away the repetitive work. We still need people, but we probably need people with a higher level of education and a higher skill set, and much fewer of them.

Tom:            How do robotics create the capability to manage cows as individuals?

Jack:            Well, if we look at something like robotic milking, the cow presents itself for milking one at a time. She gives us the opportunity to feed her specific to her requirements. Because we have her standing in the stall, we can even adjust the way that she's milked in some cases, and we certainly adjust how frequently we allow her to visit that stall and be milked.

                    We also get all kinds of new data from sensors, some attached right to the cow. For example, the same neck strap that has the device that identifies the cow will also carry a microphone that will measure the sound of her chewing her cud. We get an indication of her individual feed intake, ruminant health and metabolic health every time that device is read.

Tom:            I guess, now and then, you get a cow that has a mind of its own and decides it doesn't want to be milked by that robot, but there's virtual fencing to address that. How does that work?

Jack:            Well, this is very new and it's still in the research and development phase. People are probably familiar with virtual fencing as a way to keep your dog in the yard. I think we can individualize that and actually mount it on the cow's collar, so that, if this individual cow is due to be milked and she's not going on her own, we can play some music in her ear for a half an hour. If that doesn't give her the right signal, then we may be able to convince her with some negative stimulus, perhaps a very mild electric shock or something along that line.

                    Now, I think when I say that, people will be concerned about that from a welfare standpoint, but I can assure you, our experience with those things is that the cow gets that shock once and learns very quickly that she's going to go while the music is playing the next time.

Tom:            Our cows, do they like jazz, classical, classic-rock? What's their thing?

Jack:            I don't think it matters a whole lot. It's probably what the farmer likes — what makes him happy will do for the cows as well.

Tom:            What is dynamic software bringing to the dairy farmer's toolbox?

Jack:            Well, the dynamic software is really interesting because, generally, up to this point, we have defined the parameters and we have told these computers and robots what to deliver. But when you think about what management is and what our grandfathers used to do in the barn, if this particular cow is eating 15 pounds of grain now and producing 50 pounds of milk, grandpa would wonder: if he gave her 18 pounds of grain, would she produce 60 pounds of milk? He would try that out. If she didn't respond, he'd take her back to where she was, or even maybe take her a little lower than that. We can teach computers to do the exactly same thing, and that is what dynamic application of computer software is; let the computer adjust the parameters to get the best response out of the cow.

Tom:            Do robotics help the industry make gains on the matters of environment and animal welfare?

Jack:            Well, anything that we do to improve productivity is going to have a positive impact on the environment. If we look at things like manure and methane gas and so on — which we could consider harmful if they end up the in environment in the wrong way, in the wrong place — they are essentially produced on a per- cow basis. If we can increase the productivity of the individual cow by 30 percent, we can decrease the output by the industry of those harmful substances by 30 percent in the process. We'll need fewer cows to produce the same amount of milk.

                    In terms of the welfare of the animal, absolutely. When we cater to the cow and to her individual needs, we're going to end up with a happier cow. If I look at something like robotic milking, generally, this robot is very close to where the cow is housed or where she lives, so we don't have to walk her a couple of hundred or a thousand yards to a centralized milking parlor. She doesn't have to wait an hour for milking in a big, crowded group; she goes whenever she wants and has the freedom to do what she wants all day long.

Tom:            Are there any trends or innovations or emerging technologies that you're keeping an eye on right now?

Jack:            Well, there are certainly always new things coming down the pike. I think, in the robotic milking area, one of the things that we have learned is that a big piece of the benefit comes from bringing the milking system to the cow. I can see where our pasture-based dairies, we're going to take milking systems right out to the pasture and save the cow a lot of walking. I think that we can also probably make that technology a little closer to the cow in the barn as well, perhaps by milking her right along the feed fence, where she's eating.

Tom:            What advice can you offer farmers who are interested in thinking about the future down the road?

Jack:            Well, of course, we never know what the future will bring. I think that, as a starting point, be aware of what's in development now. Be aware of what the leading-edge producers are using now, even in other countries. That's going to help you make the right kind of decision.

                    In my work in designing barns, I always try to keep everything as flexible and open and changeable as possible. The fewer limitations we have in our systems, the better. Even if a person today wants to build a barn for a milking parlor, I'm going to draw him a barn that has a spot where robots could work very well — and where robotic feeding technology could work very well in the future, should they decide to go in that direction at some point down the road.

Tom:            Dairy industry consultant, certified CowSignals trainer and author, Jack Rodenburg. Thanks for being with us, Jack.

Jack:            Thank you.

I would like to learn about improving efficiency on my dairy through nutrition. 

The following is an edited transcript of Nicole Erwin's interview with Keiran Whitaker, founder and CEO of Entocycle. Click below to hear the full interview.  

Nicole:           I'm talking with Keiran Whitaker, founder and CEO of Entocycle. To give listeners an idea of what your company is about, I want to start with a description of your website. It opens with what appears to be millions of fly larvae. You scroll down a bit further and you see a tractor that looks like it's seeding, and then a striking message appears next to a fly that says animal farming is killing the planet. All of this appears to be a pretty bold statement. Keiran, what is Entocycle trying to tell the world?

Keiran:           The angle here is that a lot of people don't realize — and, obviously, I understand the current audience is much more clued-in — but it’s to help the general public understand that, when they eat a farmed animal, that farmed animal has itself eaten feed, and that feed comes from various locations around the world — most often from developing countries.

                        What often happens is that there is a heavy impetus placed upon the environment or area of the local region — a.k.a. cutting down rainforests to grow soy, catching small fish as fishmeal to feed animals. All of that has a huge negative effect on the environment. Actually, the local farming itself is not necessarily a negative. It's in many ways very positive — a lot of care is taken, a lot of effort — but it's all that upstream feed that goes into it that people are starting to realize is a problem, and what we're talking about is tackling that huge problem. For every kilo of meat you eat, you have to feed it several kilos of protein for that animal to feed and grow. We're tackling head-on the core root, which is a big problem.

Nicole:           Was Entocycle born out of kind of an “a-ha” moment, or was it an idea that came out of solution-seeking discussions about population growth and unsustainable grain production?

Keiran:           I think, personally, I had an “a-ha” moment, but the actual idea wasn't an “a-ha” moment, per se. My background is environmental design, environmental engineering, and I did a master's in this field, which I thought was a very good business opportunity to start. I then went traveling just one more time after university, and it turned into a five-and-a-half-year, around-the-world experience working as a scuba diving instructor. I worked in Southeast Asia, Central America, South America, and I lived up here in North America for a while. Almost everywhere that I went, especially in the developing world, rainforests are being cut down; our coral reefs are disappearing — not even dying, they're just disappearing — and our fish populations are nonexistent. The phrase “plenty of fish left in the sea” just doesn't apply anymore.

                        Essentially, I know that we will always find a new technical solution. It's just a matter of how much we are willing to give up from an environmental point of view until we find that technical solution. So, I want to push it now. You’ll meet very few people who moved from a beach in Mexico back to wet, windy, rainy London in January, but I had my mission and here I am today.

Nicole:           Your solution is the world's first environmentally-controlled, fully-automated system to produce industrial levels of black soldier fly protein. Can you tell me a bit about that process?

Keiran:           There are many different types of insects that people are starting to farm: Crickets, locusts, mealworms, et cetera — even house flies. But a lot of them have negative issues. They're pest species or disease vectors, or they're just too slow to produce. We focused on black soldier fly because it is non-disease and non-pest. The adults don't even have the traditional digestive systems, so they don't eat, which means that the larvae have to get all of that energy before metamorphosizing into the fly, so they are the fastest. They literally go from [the size of] a grain of sand to an inch within a space of less than a week, really, and they consume food waste. We're tackling two problems head-on: the massive environmental burden from food waste, plus a new source of protein. When I say “new,” animals eat insects anyway — it's just a natural part of their diet — so we're just returning to a normal function.

                        For us, our belief is you need to use 21^st-century technology to bring what is a 150-million-years-old solution into the food chain. We are talking about robotics automation, machine learning, visual recognition to drive down that price point so it can be competitive. With any new industry, you need to take a holistic approach, so we feel that the farmers of tomorrow are the engineers of today. We will always become more advanced in the way we're doing things in agriculture. It's just evolving into this new kind of technological space and we went a bit in front of that.

Nicole:           When you're talking about the larvae eating food waste, a lot of things could come to mind. What specifically are they eating?

Keiran:           The insects themselves can eat nearly any food waste — we’re talking everything from manure on a farm to household catering waste — but what we're looking at and where we think the future lies is in pre-consumer wastes. These are whiskey grains, beer grains — both the solid and the liquid grains — spent coffee waste from coffee shops or industrial processing plants, or rotten vegetables.

                        They can take anything, realistically. We want to make sure it's a clean source. We know what's the input because, then, we know what the output is. As the technology evolves, maybe we can evolve into new areas, but right now it's beer grain, coffee waste and potato waste, is what we're using in London.

Nicole:           My partner is a home brewer, and the spent grain starts to ferment quickly. Is that when the larvae like to feed most, when the grains are kind of odorous, or is it best to get the grains as quickly as possible?

Keiran:           For us, because we are a precision-farming operation, having a standardized input will always give you a better-quality product output. But, realistically, when the apple falls from the tree and starts fermenting, the insects land on the apple, the bird eats the insects and off we go up the food chain. There are amazing things about biology that we don't see every day, including that many animals digest food external to their stomach before then eating it. Remember, these insects have been fighting for billions of years for the same resources — with fungi, with bacteria — and they’re the winners. They are the big boys and girls in the market, so they will always win. They don't mind anything — so they would love the smelly grains.

Nicole:           Just out of curiosity, are there certain grains that the larvae seem to respond to better than others? In other words, are they more into simply barley-based beers or ones with more glucans that typically come from wheat and rye, like Belgian beers? What kind do they like?

Keiran:           Again, we don't just feed them with a single input. We are using a combination. Much like us, they need a balanced diet, so we use a combination. What we're currently using — because we sit right in the tip of the very trendy Bermondsey Beer Mile in London, and we have about seven big, very fast-growing breweries doing IPAs, stouts, the whole range — so we take a big plethora of inputs. They love it, honestly.

Nicole:           They're not picky.

Keiran:           No. You have to think, this is essentially like a wormery, but instead of taking six months, it takes us six days to go through the same process. When they digest it, they leave behind their fertilizer. We are not just double-impacting with the input wastes in our product; we are also producing two different products, which are protein and fertilizer.

Nicole:           How do you actually collect the larvae?

Keiran:           We have two processes: we farm the insects ourselves, and we have the world's first fully-automated insect farmer to do this. One percent is used to repopulate — so, the adult broodstock — and 99 percent go into controlled environment crates, then eat the food waste. At the end of it, you have a fine fertilizer and very large larvae, which we just put over a separation sieve plate and the soil falls through. The larvae go down to be processed into protein flour.

Nicole:           When you market this to farmers, do you just kind of take out your handful of dried flies and pitch it into a pond for aquaculture and say, "Look how tasty these are?” How do you market something like this?

Keiran:           When I was in Brazil, we used to just feed a lot of the animals on the farm — chickens and pigs — with the raw live larvae, and the amount of amazing happy noises would come. I would be followed around by a gaggle of around 40 chickens at any one point when I walked. The pigs would always know when we're coming nearby and will just literally stop me. I'm not going do a pig impression of pigs happy, but you can imagine what it sounds like.

                        Realistically, where we're looking is at the high-quality nutrition industry —providing just the protein flour to big feed companies, such as Alltech Coppens, to make into specialized pellets, predominantly aiming at the higher-end aquaculture market. But last year, aquaculture was deregulated. Next year, chickens will become deregulated. In 2020, it looks like pigs will be also. So, the market is huge — just in aquaculture alone, they are saying it's a $100-billion opportunity — so take that across all the different industries. Remember, year on year on year, we're growing bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of the farming industry. Even though I started off saying farming is a negative influence, I actually think it's a huge opportunity to increase massive sustainability, and to also feed the growing population.

Nicole:           When you say it's being deregulated, do you mean insect protein?

Keiran:           Yes, insect protein — the market it can be used in. I mean, it's almost a joke in a way, because it's called fly fishing when you go catch a salmon because you put fly on the end of the hook. Everyone knows you get a premium for free-range chicken because it's, half the time, in the field eating insects. It's just a natural source, and we need to commercialize it. That's where we're focusing.

Nicole:           How does the cost compare to other feed? You said that it is kind of a higher-quality protein.

Keiran:           Right now, we all know and the whole market out there knows that insect protein is more expensive purely because it's such a novel industry, even with the big players out there. They're still producing just relatively few tons a year.

                        Where this industry needs to go is the tens of thousands of tons a year per facility. What we're focusing on is not necessarily producing protein, but producing the technology to produce the protein and, then, finding partners to do that with — whether that’s with large waste producers, feed companies or farmers who already integrated, or even entrepreneurs who are looking to put a new unit in their farm, for example. This is a technology, so we're looking more at a decentralized model and working with other people, but our focus is on the technology to do this.  

Nicole:           What would you say is the true cost of global protein obsession, conventionally speaking?

Keiran:           Yes. I think that’s one of the big fundamental issues, is the untraceability, or what is unknown by the final consumer — the everyday mom and dad who are buying the chicken meat, et cetera. We don't include the water cost that comes from developing it. We don't include the labor cost, the shipping cost. I would probably say it's probably five times larger than what we're paying. But somewhere along the supply chain, someone is paying — and realistically, it's not us or the end consumer, it's the early-stage farmer.

                        Whether you care about farming or not, you should care about the whole supply chain. There is no reason why we can't be doing more sustainable things today. The only rationale is that people are just following the process as before, so we want to be really pioneering at the front. I think that’s why being in this partnership and this Accelerator with Alltech is phenomenal, because you guys are doing the same thing across the world. If we can tap into even a small part of that, then we have a massively positive effect as well.

Nicole:           Can you talk a little bit about how you've been able to fund what you have so far?

Keiran:           Yes. I saved up a bit of cash while I was a scuba diving instructor, as I talked about. It was not much. I moved back to the UK and moved back in with my folks after about ten years of having lived away. It was tough, I'm not going to lie. But I was almost manically obsessed with developing this technology, so I was working until 4:00 a.m. every day by myself. I found a very cheap place to work from. I then moved to Brazil and built a pilot facility over there for nearly six months. I stayed there for eight months in total.

                        When I came back to the UK, we got into an accelerator program called MassChallenge. We were one of the winners, so I got £20,000 there. I managed to hire few people. We started winning several big grants from the European and the UK government, including the European Space Agency, actually. We then got into Y Combinator, which is one of the global accelerator programs in Silicon Valley — I think it's like, one in 40,000 gets accepted each year — so, off the back of that, we raised our first significant seed round and we're now looking at our second raise, especially as part of the development we've done with Alltech. It just opened so many doors to us. It’s upward and onward, I suppose, is the right way to put it.

Nicole:           You recently presented at the Pearse Lyons Accelerator. What was that like, and how did you come across the opportunity?

Keiran:           We were approached to apply for the Accelerator program, and honestly, at the beginning, we were like, “We've been through a couple of accelerator programs, but this one might be nice because it's focused on agriculture. Let's have a go.” We applied. We flew over to Dublin from London and were, thankfully, accepted. We didn't know what to expect. We turned up and were literally blown away as to the support — being able to access the vice-presidents and CIOs and CEOs of such a large global corporate entity; it just opened our eyes. They've helped us destroy our business model and rebuild it again from scratch. They've helped us open our eyes as to how you get this into the supply chain, and that you don't have to do everything by yourself. There are already paths that have been trodden by experts — a.k.a. Alltech — that you can tap into and learn from. So, the program has been beyond our wildest dreams.

Nicole:           Where do you see them taking you next with your company, then, immediately?

Keiran:           The previous step was figuring out, “How do you not just become another commodities company?” How you don't just race to the bottom — which is never going to be good for anyone, whether it's the startup or the company or the end user — and create that extra-valued brand, which is built around trust, which is built around reputation, which is built around product development. That’s what we’re going to follow: don't aim for the bottom, aim for the top. I think that's just a good process to go forward.

Nicole:           Lastly, at the Accelerator, I'm sure you were among a number of incredibly interesting startups. Besides your own, what was your favorite?

Keiran:           That is a brutally hard question because I think one of the biggest benefits from the Accelerator program is not necessarily the program itself, but it's who you get to meet and, especially, having a cohort. Remember, you are going on a journey and it's quite lonely to run business by yourself. So, if you have other people you can lean on, you can ask, “How do you have that technology? How do you sign that contract? How do you negotiate that? Who do you know who can do this, that or the other?”

                        I would have to say that, even though it goes against some of my personal principles, I love the guys at Vence with the electronic ear tag, because I've built a lot of fences with my childhood and it's hard work. So that's phenomenal. The eggXYT guys — it's a whole new industry, looking to CRISPR. We will be looking to that as well with improving our product supply chain.

                        All of the in-house teams as well — they’re great. I mean, it's just been phenomenal. I threw a few winners out there, but everyone is a winner.

Nicole:           I'm talking with Keiran Whitaker, founder and CEO of Entocycle. Thank you.

Keiran:           Thank you very much. Have a great day.

Entocycle was among the startups who presented their innovative ideas during ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE18). Sign up for free access to watch their presentations and more by clicking below:

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Dr. Richard Murphy and Dr. Roger Scaletti. Click below to hear the complete audio:

Tom:            Why are we still using inorganic minerals? Why do nutritionists continue to overfeed nutrients and waste money? How can a mineral management program improve the health of the herd? Here to discuss these questions, among others, about the role of minerals in animal nutrition are Dr. Richard Murphy, research director at the Alltech European Bioscience Center in Dunboyne, Ireland, and Dr. Roger Scaletti, who focuses on the technical sales and support of the Alltech® Mineral Management program. Thank you both for being with us.

                    There may be some confusion and contention around the issue of organic versus inorganic minerals and the effectiveness of one over the other. First, Dr. Murphy, a brief primer, if you would, on the difference between organic versus inorganic?

Richard:        That's a great way to start this conversation. I guess it's going to be a fun conversation over the next while! Effectively, when we talk about organic minerals, all we've done is taken the mineral source, we've reacted it with an amino acid or a peptide or some other organic bonding group, and we basically make that mineral protected. Rather than thinking about an inorganic mineral as just being straight mineral, with the organic mineral, we've protected the mineral, and that protection offers us a lot of benefits. Particularly in the intestinal tract, it offers us stability — changing the pH that we would see in the gastrointestinal tract.

                    For instance, at the start of the intestinal tract, the pH is neutral. When it gets into the gastric environment — or the stomach — it becomes very acidic. Those changes in pH can impact amino acid. With the organic mineral, what we're doing is we're bonding it to either an amino acid or a peptide or some other organic molecule, and that protects us as it moves through the GI tract and makes it much more stable.

Tom:            Dr. Scaletti, just to be clear, is the use of organic versus inorganic specific to the production method? In other words, are organic minerals only for organic farms?

Roger:          Another great question. No, organic minerals would be beneficial for any farm. In a typical presentation, I would start off by saying when I mention organic minerals — I'm not talking about not using pesticides or herbicides — I'm talking about the chemistry of carbon, just like Dr. Murphy mentioned. Remember, there is no real requirement for inorganic trace minerals.  Animals need zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, etc. every day, but the source of that trace mineral is not dictated, so organic minerals are suitable for all different production systems.

Tom:            Okay, for either of you, has research proven that an organic mineral is more bioavailable and usable by the animal?

Richard:        Absolutely. I think Roger would agree. We've got an absolute wealth of information that we've built up over the last 20 years or so showing that the organic minerals are a far superior source of mineral to use in all diets.

Roger:          Yes, like Dr. Murphy mentioned, the bioavailability part, I think, is what gets people's attention initially. But then, at the end of the day, the farmer, no matter what species, is looking for a production response. So, we also have research covering production responses that you would see as you change your mineral supplementation from inorganic to organic.

Tom:            What is it about organic minerals that makes them more beneficial?

Richard:        For me — my background is in biochemistry — it's trying to understand how minerals interact, not just in terms of how the animal responds to it, but how those minerals would interact with feed and materials, for instance. Certainly, with the organic minerals, you have benefits beyond just health and just performance in that we change the way in which we can impact or influence the nutrients in the diet.

                    With the organic minerals, we know it will have less of an impact on vitamin stability, less of an impact on antioxidant function. Even with some of the enzymes that are part of the gastrointestinal and digestion process — they won't be as impacted by organic minerals as they would by inorganics.

Roger:          Then, to follow a little bit with Dr. Murphy's comment, some of the, for example, enzyme interaction work that we've done in vitro has been done in dairy cows as well, showing that, when you're only supplementing with organic minerals — in our case, Bioplex® and Sel-Plex® — you have a more effective rumen fermentation. So, you're producing more total volatile fatty acids and more butyrate, which is kind of the business of the rumen: to produce those volatile fatty acids. Whether it's a case of the organic minerals enhancing that or leading to accelerated rumen organism replication, it's one possible pathway, but I think another possible pathway would be that you're removing rumen microorganism inhabitation when you take out the inorganic minerals.

Tom:            Which trace minerals are key to improving livestock performance? Is there a shortlist?

Roger:          The shortlist would be zinc, manganese, copper, cobalt and selenium. Depending on where you are in the world, or even within a given country, one of those may be more important than another one. In North America, our most important mineral for supplementation and consideration would be selenium, just based on the background selenium in soil, which is going to dictate the selenium in forages and grains. Those five would be the main ones. On the monogastric animal, we would add iron to that. We have six minerals we'd be talking about.

Tom:            We may have touched on this a little bit before, but what is known about the utilization of the minerals by the animal — or animals, I should say?

Richard:        Well, minerals themselves are used in many different ways. Predominantly, when you look at their role in cellular systems, they're essential co-factors for many different enzymes, for instance. You won't get cellular processes working optimally or working efficiently if you don't have the necessary mineral required for the enzyme to carry out its function, or for the enzyme that's necessary for those biological functions.

                    They're wide-ranging. If you look at copper, for instance, it's involved in many different enzymes that are involved in the antioxidant response. Selenium is a particularly important one in terms of its ability to modulate, not just in antioxidant response, but in many other enzymes that are involved in many other processes as well. So, really, they're essential and critical for the most basic of cellular functions.

Tom:            Are there differences in animal chemistry species to species, or even within species, that cause mineral forms to perform differently?

Roger:          My answer — and this would be more in Richard’s wheelhouse — but just in a ruminant, we have to deal with the rumen, the rumen environment, the rumen microorganisms. In other species, you wouldn't have the rumen part. In equine or in horses, they would have a hindgut fermentation. There’s a difference in terms of how each animal is set up, but for the most part, you're seeing the similar benefits from organic minerals across the species.

Richard:        There is one common factor across all species — we touched on this at the start — which is that change in pH along the length of the GI tract. That's one of the most critical parameters that is involved in defining how good or how poor a mineral source is. If that mineral source is enabled to withstand those constant changes in pH, you won't get it to the sites of absorption in the intestine. You really need to look at having a stable mineral molecule. Obviously, organic minerals are the most stable of those. But even within the different types of organic mineral products that are out there, you'll see distinct differences in terms of the stabilities of individual products, and that will have an impact on how individual products will function in the animal.

Tom:            Why do organic trace minerals mean less inclusion, less waste and better meat quality?

Roger:          Well, to me the starting point would be that you don't need as much mineral to get the job done. Corollary to that, you're getting a more effective job done with organic minerals. I think, over the years, in the industry side of things, it's kind of been a race to the top. One company was using however many PPM [parts per million] — or milligrams — of a mineral, and the next company would add a little more to it, operating under the old adage of more is better.

                    Well, that's really not the case. We found, and have the research to show, that you're getting a more effective response with less mineral use, probably through a lot of the pathways Dr. Murphy mentioned, but it's not always an apples-to- apples comparison. Zinc oxide, at a given parts-per-million, is not going to perform the same as a zinc proteinate, or Bioplex zinc, at a much lower concentration inclusion in the diet.

Richard:        It's actually of interest on the regulatory side — and I think Dr. Scaletti would probably agree with this as well — when you look at changes in legislation over the last number of years, in particular in the EU, there have been changes in the maximum permissible limits that are allowed in feed. I think the zinc — this is just back to Roger's mention of zinc oxide there — I think the zinc area is one in which we can demonstrate that quite nicely. There's a lot of talk in the EU about how they're going to ban zinc oxide use as a prophylactic and prevent scouring in piglets and calves, for instance.

                    One of the reasons for that that they've quoted is that the regulators are concerned about the impact that zinc oxide can have on co-selection for antimicrobial resistance. But when you look at the permissible limits that they have of zinc in feed, they make reference to the use of phytase, for instance, as being a way to perhaps enhance the effectiveness of the zinc source that's added to the diet or enhance the background level of zinc that's in the feed.

                    All in all, I think there's a move by the regulators. Now, the regulators, if they want to change those limits again, will have to come back and revisit the delineation between inorganic and organic minerals and the differences in terms of the bioavailabilities of those. I think, in the future, we may even see regulators like the EU body — which would be the EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) — would say, “Okay, we'll need to examine this in more detail.”

                    Certainly, the Brazilian authorities have already done that. They've made a clear delineation between the availability of inorganic and organic mineral sources. The more recent documents that have been published by authorities in Brazil basically delineate clearly between what levels of inorganic you should feed in a diet and what levels of organic you should feed in the diet, and they're distinctly different.

Tom:            As you have observed improvements in performance, are there any lessons? Any takeaways from that experience that have informed what you do going forward?

Roger:          I would say: more isn't better. I think a lot of people are accustomed to looking at a tag or a ration report, and they're looking for a certain number or level of mineral supplementation. That's only so useful if you, then, don't read the ingredient list and see, is it coming from oxide, sulfate, organic proteinate — whatever the case may be. I think the source of mineral is more important than the amount. So again, it's about making sure it's an apples-to-apples comparison, and less doesn't mean less performance. I think a lot of times, at least in the United States, our industry would be looking for high levels of supplementation, and they equate high level with being good or what is essential, and that's not really the case.

Richard:        Just to add to that as well, Dr. Scaletti, I think it's important that the industry really looks at organic minerals and says they're not all the same. There is a misconception, I think, within the industry. You have all these different brand names and different types of organic mineral products. I guess the natural inclination is to say, “Well, it's an organic mineral. One product must be the same as the other.” There are very distinct differences between them.

                    Again, this is back to that concept of how that mineral source interacts or how stable it is as it moves through the GI tract. Certainly, in some of the work that we've seen from the team at our European Biocenter in Ireland, we've basically shown there are very distinct differences in terms of the stabilities of different organic trace mineral products, and that can have distinct impacts, not just on the bioavailability, but also in which [of] those different products would interact with different premix and different feed components.

Tom:            There are some misperceptions out there about minerals. What beliefs are most prominent and how do you address them?

Richard:        I think the biggest misconception is with regard to size. That's probably the biggest industry misconception that's there, and that's a historical one. Originally, when organic minerals first became available, they were simply complexes between amino acids, like methionine or lysine, with copper and with zinc. Certainly, people thought, “Well, if you have a small bonding group, then absorption of it is much better or delivery of it is much easier.” That's not the case. What we've seen is that it's the type of bonding group that's used — so, the type of amino acid. But, particularly when you get into peptide-based technologies like we see in Bioplex, it's the actual amino acid sequence in those peptides. So, it's even more fundamental than we would have thought in the past. The configuration and the type of amino acids present in the peptide would very significantly influence the stability.

                    I think the biggest misconception in the industry about organic trace minerals is that size is important. I can absolutely say with certainty size is not an issue. It's the type of bonding group that's used. And more importantly, when you look at peptides, it's the configuration and the sequence of amino acids that are in the peptide that are of more importance.

Roger:          I would just maybe follow up with that in regard to organic selenium. The battle is typically, “What is the content of selenomethionine in a selenium yeast product?” Dr. Murphy would have research showing it's not only an effect of how much selenomethionine you have present; it's how much of that can be digested and released. So, again, just coming back to that concept of “more isn't always better,” especially if what you're supplementing isn't released — or isn't available — to the animal.

Richard:        Yeah, that's actually a great point, Dr. Scaletti, just on the organic selenium side. Certainly, in the EU, we've seen newer forms of, again, so-called organic selenium sources being produced and available for sale, and these are actually chemically synthesized selenomethionine and selenomethionine derivatives that are distinctly different and have a distinctly different offering than you would see with selenium yeast products, such as Sel-Plex, for instance.

                    Again, it's back to the concept of stability. Free selenomethionine molecule is not necessarily the most stable one when you look at again the influences of those processes in the GI tract. So, certainly, even within organic selenium sources, [it’s a] much, much different proposition now with the availability of these newer chemically synthesized molecules.

Tom:            Livestock in many parts of the world have been overfed inorganic forms of trace minerals, such as copper, manganese and zinc, to offset their inefficient digestibility. The excess ends up in manure, and levels of these trace minerals have gotten so high that it's actually illegal to spread that manure out in the fields to support growth forages or grain. So, what happens to all of that excess manure? We're stuck with it?

Richard:        Well, I guess if we can't spread it, we've got to do something with it, and it looks like we could be. I know from some of the newer technologies that are coming out — some great startup companies that are basically looking at detoxifying heavy metal in soils using microbial-based solutions. So, perhaps, this is one way in which we can look at remediating those heavily contaminated lagoons, if you like.

                    Other options may be stripping-based technologies. These are basically looking at removing minerals, and this will be costly, Tom, I would have to say, removing mineral with EDTA-based chelation. But, certainly, something has to be done, and I think organic minerals are, without a doubt, one of the solutions to the problem. You can look at adding less mineral, having less runoff and then, obviously, less contamination in those lagoons. Certainly, the drive toward reducing environmental contamination will definitely be driven and solved, without a doubt, by the increased use of organic minerals over the next couple of years.

Tom:            In some places, regulation is beginning to force the issue. A number of countries around the world have already passed legislation restricting the use of trace minerals because this overfortification has led to pollution. Do you see this type of legal action as a continuing trend?

Richard:        I guess it goes back to the comment I made earlier about the regulations around zinc and zinc usage in feed, but also, then, the impending ban in the EU on zinc oxide as a prophylactic. I think the regulators will take a greater look at the issue, and I think they will certainly have to start making decisions on whether they promote organic minerals as a way in which we can reduce this or not. It's not the job of a regulator to promote a brand of products, but certainly, I think, when you look at the proposition that organic minerals give in terms of being a solution to the problem, they'll have to start promoting the use of organic minerals as a way in which you can add less, not impacting performance, and have much less of an environmental impact.

Roger:          I would just say that I think the path forward is just going to depend [on] where you are in the world. I don't know that the United States is looking at any of these zinc, manganese or copper regulations any time soon. Our only regulations in terms of trace minerals would be selenium and the mineral we haven't talked about today: iodine. If you're using iodine in the EDDI (ethylenediamine dihydroiodide) form, there are limits on how much you're allowed to feed. Other than that, selenium would be our only regulated mineral, and today, we could go out and supplement as much zinc as we want in any animal in the United States without a problem.

Tom:            Are you seeing growth in the organic minerals market?

Roger:          We're seeing tremendous growth, both globally and regionally. In North America, I think, as people realize, again, that it's not an apples-to-apples comparison or you're not just looking at a level of mineral — that you need to pay attention to the form — that people are realizing that organic minerals have an important role. I also think we're getting a little bit closer on the cost difference; inorganic minerals are still cheaper, but their price keeps going up. I don't know that cost is as prohibitive as it used to be, from a practical farm level.

                    That's probably the only reason people aren't using organic minerals as their only source. It's a cost thing. Now, when you start looking at the response and, then, the return over investment opportunity, well, it's not a cost: it's a profit-maker. So, I think it's just a slow change.

                    When you look at trace minerals, for 60-70 years, we used inorganic minerals; for the past 20, we've used organic. So, it's still pretty new in terms of what's going on in the general supplementation industry. When you look at some of the different documents out there — for example, National Research Council or NRC Guidelines — they really don't get into a discussion on form. As Dr. Murphy mentioned, the Brazilian government recognizes that there are form differences, and some other countries around the world are starting to do so as well. I still think it’s left to feed companies, nutritionists and, ultimately, the farmer or end user to make a decision of, “Do I want to make an investment? If so, how much?” That's kind of where the decision is today.

Tom:            As you continue working toward better performance in animals, are you exploring new ideas for delivering nutrition more efficiently? Is that just an ongoing process?

Richard:        Yeah, it's an ongoing evolution. I think we've moved, over the last number of years, more toward, rather than thinking about nutrition as just being an individual component, we've really focused on the benefits of multicomponent packs. Certainly, there are a lot of different synergies you can get from different products present in a pack and the many ways you can get, I guess, good synergism between those components. Certainly, with some of the Blueprint® products that we have in Alltech, we've seen tremendous increases in health or performance and, again, these are multicomponent impacts. Rather than thinking about nutrition as being individual components added together, we tend to think about the synergism that we can get from multiple components out of them. That's something that we'll focus on more and more over the next couple of years.

Tom:            This has been really enjoyable. I have one final question: what new developments in minerals or mineral feeding strategies do you think we might see within the next five years or so?

Roger:          I don't know if I see a new development as much as just people embracing organic minerals more than they currently do. I'd say, currently, most of the industry would be at some sort of a partial supplementation, where the bulk of the mineral that's being supplemented is inorganic sulfate or oxide, and then they try to come up with how much organic to put in. They want to get all the benefits of organic, but they don't want all the price.

                    I see more of the bigger advancement being, as people just progress through that decision in their head, from partial replacement to more of the full replacement or total replacement, and realizing that organic minerals are what's doing the heavy lifting – that there really isn't a big need for those inorganic minerals that, for maybe just historical purposes, they just can't seem to kick out of the ration.

Tom:            Do you see something in the near future, Dr. Murphy?

Richard:        I'd agree with Dr. Scaletti in that. We’re going to see increased awareness in the benefits of organic minerals and how you can use less of those organic minerals and not have a negative impact on health and performance. That, obviously, is going to feed into an environmental benefit. I think we'll also see changes, perhaps, in the way in which we apply these minerals. I think people are looking more and more toward technology as a driver of agriculture.

                    I think we'll see differences in the next few years in the way in which feed delivery is made, in the way in which you can actually begin to look at delivering feed on farms. I do think we'll see more and more digital-based technologies that will influence feeding strategies, and then, it will obviously influence how we formally feed.

Tom:            Dr. Richard Murphy, research director at the Alltech European Bioscience Center in Dunboyne, Ireland, and Dr. Roger Scaletti, who focuses on the technical sales and support of the Alltech Mineral Management program. Thank you both for joining us.

Richard:        Thank you very much.

Roger:          Thank you.  

Drs. Scaletti and Murphy presented their insights during ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE18). Don't miss the chance to hear the latest in animal health and nutrition at ONE19. Click here to learn more. 

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Debbie Phillips-Donaldson. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:              I'm talking with Debbie Phillips Donaldson. As editor-in-chief of Petfood Industry Magazine, it's her job to keep a sharp eye on trends in the industry, and she joins us to share some of those observations. Thank you for being with us, Debbie.

Debbie:          Thank you for having me.

Tom:              So, let's begin with the big question: What is the outlook for pet food marketing, the industry, the market?

Debbie:          Overall, it’s very positive. The market is still growing at about 4 percent a year globally, which is better than most other consumer goods industries. In some of the emerging markets, it's growing even faster. But even in the very mature markets, like North America and the U.S. especially, it's still 3 percent or 4 percent growth a year.

Tom:              Is it undergoing change, being reshaped? And if so, what's driving that?

Debbie:          It's one of those industries — like any other consumer goods industry —that is always undergoing change, same as with human food. That is one big influence: what's happening in human food. But I will say the overall driver would be just that the consumer interaction has ramped up the last five to ten years for human food, and definitely for pet food. They want to know so much more about what's in the food — where the ingredients come from, how it is made — and that's causing pet food companies to be on their toes and to pay a lot more attention to what they're putting in the food. Not that they've never done that, but they are being forced to be more transparent about it, which I think is one of the big changes.

Tom:              What would you say are the fastest-growing pet food categories?

Debbie:          Right now, they are the what you would call “alternative formats” — raw, freeze-dried, baked — that are all fastest-growing. But, keep in mind, those are much smaller categories to start with. Dry food is by far the largest category around the world, and in some markets, canned food, but the growth is definitely happening in those newer types of food.

Tom:              And what about these so-called “indulgence items” — toppers and additives or supplements — “inclusions,” I think they are called?

Debbie:          Yes. That's definitely another very fast-growing category, and I will say they're not even necessarily indulgences in all cases. They're becoming much more functional. A lot of them, like treats, have functional ingredients in them and companies are marketing them that way.

Tom:              In your role as an editor, what issues come to your attention as mattering the most to today's pet food consumers?

Debbie:          Well, I would say definitely the transparency. As I mentioned before, the ingredients are always big. What is in the food, and almost as importantly — for some people, maybe even more importantly — what is not in the food? That is not necessarily coming from a base of knowledge or sound education about it, but that's what they're thinking and wanting to see.

Tom:              Are traditional brick-and-mortar pet product retailers able to keep up with or to compete with the big online operations like Amazon or Chewy (now owned by PetSmart), Petco, Walmart — those big ones?

Debbie:          It's a huge challenge. It's definitely a challenge all around the world, I think, but especially in more mature markets. I think, in the U.S., the independent pet stores are trying to stay ahead of the game by offering much more of an experience, and there is some data showing that millennials, which are now the largest group of pet owners, seem to value that experience. But, of course, they shop online more than anyone else.

In Europe, it's even more difficult because it's harder for companies to price competitively. In the U.S., they can establish what's called MAP — or minimum advertised price — so companies can try to ensure that what's being charged for one of their foods online is not undercutting the independent pet store retailers much. In Europe, that's not allowed to happen, so it's a challenge.

Tom:              Amazon recently launched its own line of dog food — Wag, I think it's called?

Debbie:          Yes.

Tom:              And it was just the latest entry in the expansion into the online pet retail market. Should competitors be concerned about that?

Debbie:          I think so. I would say that pet food companies should be concerned, but again, retailers should, too.

Tom:              You mentioned that transparency is a concern among consumers. How is the pet food industry leveraging technology to become more transparent and to be more helpful to consumers?

Debbie:          Well, obviously, social media is a key way to do that. I would say that a lot of pet food companies are still trying to find their way in terms of how to be more transparent. There are technological ways. For example, I know some companies will have a barcode or QR code on their packaging. Consumers can scan that and see exactly where the ingredients in that product came from. You go to an “interactive map,” if you will. That's the kind of thing that they are doing to aid transparency.

Tom:              Are there some leading latest trends in pet food ingredients?

Debbie:          Anything that you're seeing in human food as being big is definitely also big in pet food. I've even heard that sometimes pet food leads human food, which didn’t used to be the case. But grain-free is still huge, which sort of plays up the whole gluten-free trend in human food. Proteins — there's a big focus on proteins, and with pets, it's often novel proteins. I was at this big trade show in Germany two weeks ago called Interzoo, and I actually saw pet food with camel in it.

Tom:              Camel?

Debbie:          Camel as the protein source. That's a really novel protein. And then, the plant-based ingredients are becoming much more interesting, and you're seeing more and more of them being used and consumers seeming to seek them out.

Tom:              What about black soldier fly larvae?

Debbie:          Yes. Insect protein is definitely, at least, getting a lot of attention, whether or not it is actually being used a lot. In the U.S., it's not yet approved as a pet food ingredient, but, supposedly, that is being fast-tracked — as much as regulatory things can go quickly. I believe it is legal now or close to being legal in the EU. And so, you do see pet foods and treats in the EU with insect protein, and black soldier fly larvae are one of the big ones being developed right now.

Tom:              Are smaller dogs gaining in appeal, and are there implications for dog food?

Debbie:          Yes. Smaller dogs are definitely much more popular around the world. As urbanization increases around the world, it makes more sense for people to own smaller pets, including cats and small dogs. So, for the implications for pet foods, you've seen a lot more product devoted to those types of dogs — everything from the size of the kibble, to the shape of it, to the packaging size. Packaging sizes are declining — there is data showing that — and that is one factor.

Tom:              Looking globally, what are some emerging pet markets?

Debbie:          Asia-Pacific is one of the fastest-growing regions — and within that, China. China is booming. Only 2 percent to 4 percent of the population own pets right now. But as incomes rise, there are more and more people owning pets and spending money on them. The growing middle class is not at all shy about spending money on their pets. So that's booming. It's growing by double digits every year.

                        Latin America is still growing strong. Eastern Europe has some strength, although decreased a little in the last few years. The Middle East and Africa are growing quickly, too, but those markets are still tiny right now.

Tom:              Obesity — is it as much of an issue in pets as in humans? And, if so, how is that influencing the pet food industry?

Debbie:          Yes, it is a very big problem in pets, especially in developed markets. Probably around 50 percent of pets are deemed to be obese or overweight. One of the issues is that a lot of owners don't recognize that their pets are obese or overweight, and so there's an education gap there that is a struggle for veterinarians and pet food companies.

                        In terms of product development, though, there are already lots of weight- control products out there, and I think there is some other research going on that is looking at specific ingredients that can help with that — with satiety and adding fiber and things like that, to help with weight control.

Tom:              We hear so much about “fake news,” and we're all having problems with the matter of information and discerning what's real and what isn't. What are the challenges that this age of misinformation present to the pet food industry?

Debbie:          They're huge. I would say that that's one of the drivers behind this consumer desire for transparency. About 11 years ago, there was a big pet food recall — 2007 — when a Chinese supplier deliberately contaminated an ingredient called wheat gluten with melamine to try to boost protein content. It caused all kinds of terrible sicknesses and deaths, unfortunately, among pets. It was massive. I think it really shone a light on the fact that a lot of people didn't know what was in their pet's food, where it was made and how it was made.

The industry has since come a lot farther in being more transparent, and they're saying this, but there's still a big gap there. So, into that gap has rushed all kinds of misinformation and myths. I always say, “The internet abhors a vacuum.” There are all kinds of advocates — some well-informed and some not — and activists, if you will, discussing how terrible pet food is, et cetera, et cetera. It's something that the industry has been fighting for a good ten years now. I think they're getting better. I think companies are getting better, but there's still a long way to go.

Tom:              Any trends that we haven't touched on that you're keeping an eye on?

Debbie:          Well, we touched on the whole online retail trend and growth. There is another trend that's on the retail side that's having a big impact on the industry, and that is what's called mass premiumization. It used to be that the premium pet foods that had certain product features or claims —  natural, holistic and limited ingredients, et cetera, et cetera —  those were pretty much exclusive to the pet specialty channels and pet stores. Five to ten years ago, some brands started figuring out how to take those products and features and offer them at a price point that worked in grocery stores or other mass marketers, and they've been hugely successful. Those brands have been hugely successful and have, in fact, been acquired by human food companies recently. So, it has caused this huge shift in the types of products that people could find. It's great for the consumers, but it is disrupting different elements of the industry. That's one trend.

I would say another one would be that the health and wellness and ingredient focus just continues to grow, and more research aids that. We'll be hearing a lot this week (at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference) about nutrigenomics and other -omics technology. That's definitely at play in pet food and pet nutrition. Personalization and customization is becoming more of a focus of the industry, too, aided by things like nutrigenomics. So, there are a lot of trends happening that are moving in lockstep with what’s happening for humans.

Tom:              Debbie Phillips Donaldson is editor-in-chief of Petfood Industry Magazine. Thanks for being with us, Debbie.

Debbie:          Thank you.

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The following is an edited transcript of Nicole Erwin's interview with Dr. Kayla Price. Click below to hear the full audio:

Nicole:           As the poultry industry continues to reduce or eliminate the use of antibiotics and adhere to increased regulatory control on pharmaceuticals, what can producers do to ensure their final product is free of harmful bacteria? I'm talking with Dr. Kayla Price, poultry technical and research manager for Alltech Canada. Thank you for joining us.

Kayla:             Thank you so much for having me.

Nicole:           It's been a year since the Veterinary Feed Directive was imposed, requiring livestock producers to provide a prescription for antibiotic use with their animals. The move was in response to growing reports of an antibiotic resistance among the human population, but the superbugs are popping up everywhere — resistant strains of bacteria in humans and animals. Dr. Price, how is the poultry industry responding to consumer and federal demands that antibiotics be cut out as much as possible in livestock production?

Kayla:             Well, I think as a part of your question for the U.S. specifically, you touched on it: one of their responses was saying, "Look, we need to be able to respond to this." This was coming into the Veterinary Feed Directive. Without going into the details of it, it's not necessarily a true prescription, per se, but making sure that there is more stewardship or oversight of the drugs that are being prescribed or being given, either on a treatment basis or, to some extent, on a preventative basis.

                        That would be the U.S. direction, whereas — if we start looking to some other places — where I'm from in Canada, we've gone in the direction where we've decided to move toward, again, veterinary oversight, but prescribing these drugs — drugs, which were once used legally as preventative antibiotics in the feed at lower levels, are now moving toward prescription and what the Canadians called the Veterinary Drug Directorate. This is, again, allowing for much more oversight and much more ownership of what it is that we're putting into these birds, specifically.

                        If we look globally, other folks have gone in the direction of putting in place regulations. If you look toward the U.K., there are regulations of how these antibiotics are used and when they should be used. The idea here is, again, more ownership and more oversight of when these drugs are used and how they're going to be used.

                        If we need to treat sick animals, we need to treat sick animals. But, at the end of the day, if we can do better when it comes to prevention in terms of using alternative strategies, then let's do better on the prevention side and save those antibiotics for prescriptions when it comes to treating sick animals.

Nicole:           Your specialty is partially in providing methods of disease reduction in poultry, like coccidiosis. Can you explain a bit about what this disease is and why it can be so rampant in poultry, from backyard chickens to the large commercial house operations?

Kayla:             That's a big question. I say that with a smile on my face because I spent so much time working with coccidiosis, so I'll try to bring it back down to a smaller level. Essentially, coccidiosis is a disease, which is caused by the parasite Eimeria. There are many different species of this parasite. It's very host-specific. The parasites that infect chickens only infect chickens, and then you have parasites that will specifically infect turkeys, and so on. The end result is essentially the same: it's an intestinal parasite. It impacts the gut barrier. It basically breaks through the gut barrier, so the gut is not able to work as a defense anymore, very, very simply. Now, the bird can run into problems with the gut not working as well, such as wet manure, having diarrhea and not performing as well because they're sick.

                        The problem is, when we talk about coccidiosis, the severity of the disease is really a numbers game: the more parasites ingested, the more severe the disease. At low levels, you can create something like a live vaccine, which is used very commonly in the industry, but you need to make sure that you're having proper cycling to develop this immunity. The problem is that it can be very difficult to manage. It can be successful when done right, but on the other hand, it can be very difficult to manage for producers who are coming in and learning this for the first time.

                        At that point, they run into this risk of having more of an impact down the road on these birds. Because it's, again, a disease that’s impacting the gut, we want to make sure that we're trying to maintain the health of that gut as much as we possibly can through many other ways, as well as trying to have an impact on that parasite itself.

Nicole:           How has this disease, and other disease in poultry, responded to antibiotic use as resistance becomes more problematic? How has that influenced alternative methods of control?

Kayla:             With coccidiosis specifically, if we start looking back at how prevention is set up within the industry itself, there are two arms, I guess you can say.

                        You have your anticoccidial drugs arm. So, that would take care of ionophores and chemical coccidiostats, which are used to help in the prevention of coccidiosis, that parasite.

                        Then you have your antibiotics arm. These would be antibiotics that are either preventative or, to some extent, for treatment. I'm just going to talk about the preventative side that would help with bacterial infections or secondary bacterial infections.

                        If we look to coccidiosis as a disease, part of the problem is, if it's running through the bird at low levels, it's creating this change — it's essentially having a negative impact on that gut barrier. It's creating the change in the environment, in the intestine, that allows for or creates the opportunity for bacteria to start taking over. Often, what gets paired — I kind of call them “sisters,” so to speak, or “brothers” — but what gets paired with coccidiosis ends up being necrotic enteritis, which is caused by the bacteria clustering perfringens. This is bacteria that loves to eat protein, as it can't make protein on its own. The proteins that are released from breaking down the intestinal barrier, it takes full advantage of. Stepping back, if we go back to those two arms of our prevention within the industry — our anticoccidial arm and our antibiotic arm — we come to dealing with our coccidiosis issue just as much as dealing with the bacterial issue, which is often trying to deal with necrotic enteritis. In that case, on the preventative side for antibiotics, what we're trying to do in terms of regulation is to start pulling these back or have more judicious use.

                        On the anticoccidial side, if we look to, again, what's happened in places like the U.K., in Europe, as well as Canada and the U.S., they're still allowing some anticoccidials to be used. Canada and the U.S. still allow chemical anticoccidials. Ionophores have a little bit of antibiotic activities. If we're talking Raised Without Antibiotics or No Antibiotics Ever, the ionophores would be taken out, but otherwise we would still have that arm. We still need to make sure that we're doing things on the alternative side to help with the antibiotic arm — to supplement what else we're doing.

Nicole:           Public health groups are putting pressure on big buyers, such as restaurants and fast food chains, to no longer purchase from producers that use any kind of antibiotics. But there is some gray area here with a group of antibiotics that you mentioned called ionophores — medications like Monensin — because they're among the list of in-feed antibiotics and not considered medically important to human medicine by the World Health Organization. Groups like McDonald's have announced that they are pulling back from purchasing meat that has a history of antibiotics, except it has given a pass to the ionophores. How do you feel about allowing ionophores in the system?

Kayla:             I think, with this, it comes back to those two arms. We really have to think about how parasites are different from bacteria; the two are quite different. With the ionophores specifically, even though some bodies believe there are some antibiotic components to them, the main aspect of using these ionophores is very, very specific to the parasites for which they’re being used, just as much as  chemical coccidiostats. If we look at areas where they've decided to have more oversight of using antibiotics to deal with bacteria in live animal production, they’ve said, "We need to still make sure we have a handle over the coccidiosis side,” because that can be very difficult to handle, especially as we're dealing with birds in larger amounts and, again, with severity being a numbers game.

                        They've made the decision that the antibiotic aspect of the ionophores is relatively low — that, from the standpoint of doing a cost-benefit analysis, it's of more benefit to use it to help with the coccidiosis aspect. If we start looking to companies that are saying they want to have more oversight or try to reduce or eliminate antibiotic use, they've had the conversation with their industry members and said, "We can handle this if we tackle the antibiotic arm, but it can be very difficult to handle if we completely get rid of both our antibiotic and our anticoccidial arm." It's not an easy decision, and it can be very difficult if you start looking at it from the marketing perspective, just as much as what's actually going to work on the farm.

                        But again, in terms of being able to allow our producers and our farmers to have the correct tools to manage their birds effectively, some people have made that choice — to allow these ionophores and allow a strong anticoccidial arm — so that they can make sure they have a strong oversight of prevention when it comes to bacteria and antibiotics.

Nicole:           Do you feel like these ionophores could eventually be weaned out of a nutrient management program, or we're just not there yet with the science?

Kayla:             That's a very good question. I think some people have, to be quite honest, already answered that, because some people are raising these birds as a part of the Raised Without Antibiotics program or No Antibiotics Ever program. They're raising them effectively without using ionophores or chemical coccidiostats. Whether it's with live vaccines or whether it's with other alternative products on that side — as well as with good feed management, good water management, operational excellence when it comes to the farm itself, and bird management — they're putting all of that together and doing it very effectively.

                        What everyone will tell you, and what my customers will say, is that it's certainly a learning curve to get there. It doesn't happen overnight. You can try to jump right into it, but that's not as easy as you think. In order to get to the point where they're doing this well, it's taken a long time for them to get there — and a very good transition process, and in that transition process, being able to use that anticoccidial prevention arm. That includes both ionophores and chemicals.

                        In terms of taking out ionophores completely, I think for something like that to happen, we need to make sure that there is always a choice, not just for the consumer who's purchasing the meat at the end of the day, but a choice for our farmers in how they're able to raise these birds. They need to go into their toolbox with something that can help them — they need to be able to have that choice and that opportunity [for prevention].

                        That's why, I think, part of the reason why the debate on ionophores is still going on today. I think, for that point, I think it can be done, but I also think, on the other side, you need to be able to at least have that choice, specifically when it comes to coccidiosis prevention.

Nicole:           What kind of research have you seen on the impact of these antibiotics in water? I ask because the overall message with all of this is that management seems to be a holistic approach — any one thing can affect another. Do you agree?

Kayla:             Absolutely. I think the holistic approach to management is critical, because if we're only thinking of things just as one thing alone or thinking in these silos, I really think we're completely missing the point of how we can work with these birds and how we can produce meat or eggs or chicks or poults. You really need to have this full picture look at it — not just what's happening at your barn at this specific time, but also starting to think about, “Okay, well, what's happening before my birds come here? What's happening after my birds come here? What's happening on the breeder level — that full circle and everything in between?”

                        Again, thinking about operational excellence, but also making sure there's really good communication and a strong management team, not just on the producer level but also with the nutritionist, with the veterinarian — to have that complete trifecta, if you will, of everyone who can come together and make sure that these birds are raised as well as they possibly can be, and producing good, quality, safe meat or eggs at the end of the day.

Nicole:           You mentioned that there are some producers that have been able to go No Antibiotics Ever. What are some of the alternatives that you’ve seen that they are using?

Kayla:             There's a full range. Some of the alternatives would be looking toward using complete programs together, which could include things like mannan-rich fractions from the outer yeast cell wall. Some folks will be using things like essential oils, like organic or proteinated trace minerals. You can look at probiotics, prebiotics and, to be honest, herbs, plants — the list really goes on and on. But I think, at the end of the day, in terms of all of these different options that are out there, I think the best one is putting these combinations together strategically and using them strategically in your management program to complement what you’re doing in the feed, in the water and on the farm.

Nicole:           Kayla Price is poultry technical manager for Alltech Canada. Thank you so much.

Kayla:             Thank you so much for having me.

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The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Wolfgang Auer, CEO of ag-tech startup Smartbow. Click below to hear the full audio:

Tom:              I'm talking with Wolfgang Auer, CEO of the Austria-based startup Smartbow, one of the startups in the 2018 Pearse Lyons Accelerator program. He is here to talk to us about his company's center technology designed to help the farmer stay well ahead of problems and make reliable decisions. We thank you for being with us, Wolfgang.

Wolfgang:      Thank you very much.

Tom:              What problem does Smartbow intend to solve?

Wolfgang:      Smartbow is addressing the problem of early detection when animals get sick. With our technology — ear tags, real-time positioning and artificial intelligence — we can watch over each animal, like my grandmother did with 10 dairy cows on our farm. We can detect if the animal feels sick earlier. We detect illness in the animal days before they are really sick.

Tom:              What is the technology? How does it work?

Wolfgang:      We have an ear tag on the animal, and that ear tag is measuring the movement of the animal's ear. We know exactly if the animal is eating, resting or ruminating. With our positioning system, we know, every second, where the animal is with an accuracy of three feet. We combine all of that data so we can detect any minor changes in behavior.

Tom:              I was going to ask you: why the ear? You've partially answered that. But do the ears move in a way that can tell you things?

Wolfgang:      Yes. It's very accurate. Our accuracy is about 99 percent because the ear is the most accurate place we can measure everything that the animal is doing.

Tom:              The Smartbow technology detects changes up to five days before the farmer or the veterinarian can see it. How does that early detection impact a farmer's operation and success?

Wolfgang:      The farmer can take the animal out of the herd and can bring it to a separate place, like a hospital. Then the animal can get back into the operation sooner, so the farmers aren't losing as much money. A sick cow doesn't produce milk.

Tom:              So, the farmer has all this data coming into them. Are they trained in how to analyze it, how to make sense of it?

Wolfgang:      The data is analyzed by artificial intelligence. We train this artificial intelligence and the farmer gets only an alert. With the positioning system, he knows in real time where the animal is and can identify the animal very quickly.

Tom:              Tell us about your business model.

Wolfgang:      The business model is very simple: Smartbow is a service business model, and we have an initial payment for the hardware. This is very low; it's about €25 per ear tag. Then we charge the farmer a monthly fee per cow.

Tom:              Have you received funding?

Wolfgang:      We have received funding. I'm also financed by my family. We make plastic products.

Tom:              And have you taken the product to market?

Wolfgang:      Yes. So far, we have sold more than 100,000 ear tags in 40 countries on four continents. We have about 400 clients, who have anywhere from eight dairy cows to 5,000.

Tom:              And how about expansion plans?

Wolfgang:      The plan is to expand into the USA and China.

Tom:              Tell us about the Pearse Lyons Accelerator Program and how it's influenced your business.

Wolfgang:      We work together with nutrition companies, and we are doing some trials with their internal accelerators. We can see that our technology is leveraging their technology. If we combine both, we can save a lot of money.

Tom:              Wolfgang Auer, CEO of the Austria-based startup Smartbow. Thank you for being with us. We appreciate it.

Wolfgang:      Thank you.

Smartbow was one of 10 startup companies participating in the 2018 Pearse Lyons Accelerator program, which provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for disruptive ag-tech startups. The program takes leading innovators from around the world to Dogpatch Labs, a startup hub in Dunboyne, Ireland, for a three-month accelerator that offers workspace, mentorship, networking and potential investment. The experience culminates at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A., where startups are selected to pitch to an international crowd of 4,000 potential investors, journalists and influencers from the agribusiness industry.

Watch the 2018 Pearse Lyons Accelerators pitch at ONE18. Sign up for the Alltech Idea Lab below:

Weaning piglets effectively is critical for farmers to ensure they are healthy and productive. Pigs that do not transition well from milk to a solid diet have their gut health compromised and become susceptible to disease challenges. Ernie Hansen, manager of swine nutrition and technical services at Hubbard Feeds, sits down with Tom Martin to explain the strategies producers can implement to support a successful transition and improve long-term pig production. 

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Ernie Hansen, manager of swine nutrition and technical services at Hubbard Feeds. Click below to hear the full audio:

Tom:              This is Tom Martin, and I'm here with Ernie Hansen, manager of swine nutrition and technical services at Hubbard Feeds. He joins us to talk about transitioning piglets at weaning from milk to solid food. Thanks for being with us, Ernie.

Ernie:             All right, thank you.

Tom:              What are some of the problems that producers face when they begin weaning piglets from milk and moving them to a solid diet?

Ernie:             Well, helping pigs make a smooth transition at weaning has always been a high priority for pig farmers. Today's high-producing genetics have been selected to wean 30-plus pigs per sow per year and to produce pigs that will reach a market weight at or in excess of 300 pounds, and to do this quickly and efficiently. This performance level and, even more importantly, the way these pigs start on feed is drastically different than pigs from ten years ago.

                        Couple these factors with the known stressors of weaning — weaning age, the physical separation from the mother sow, commingling, transportation, the environment difference, and the traditional milk-to-solid-food transition — and that's a stark reminder that there is no substitute for good animal husbandry for the first week post-weaning. The old adage is certainly as true now as it ever was: "A pig never gets over a good or bad start."

Tom:              What are some of the outcomes seen in a piglet that does not transition well post-wean?

Ernie:             Health is a big factor at this stage of life for the piglet. If pigs aren't eating well, gut health is compromised, and this can affect their overall health and make them susceptible to disease challenges. This requires farm workers to spend more time treating pigs, and depending on how severe the challenge is, there may be an increase in mortality and morbidity as well.

                        We use the term "all-value pigs." This is a reference to the pigs that reached the targeted market weight on time with minimal health challenges. These all-value pigs represent the highest returns for farmers and the greatest opportunity for increased profitability.

Tom:              So, what is the importance of feed intake? What does the producer need to be thinking about as piglets are making this transition?

Ernie:             To make it very simple, intake is everything at this stage of the pig's life. Healthy pigs are very efficient. That means every extra bite of feed is extra weight gain. It's the most efficient and cost-effective growth the pig will experience.

Tom:              Why is gut health critical at this particular phase in a pig's life?

Ernie:             You may not realize it, but the gut is the first line of defense for the young pig and is actually a large part of the immune system. It's a barrier that keeps out bacteria, and if it’s not functioning properly, those bacteria get into the pig's bloodstream and can spread, causing disease challenges for the pig. As more research is done on gut health and gut function, we're discovering that pigs don't always fully recover from the initial attacks on their system. While it may look like they recover and have good performance, research is showing they won't have gains as good as those pigs that didn’t experience the health challenges early in life.

Tom:              So, what steps or management techniques should producers and farmers take to make sure that pigs transition well post-wean?

Ernie:             We work closely with our customers in a couple of different areas to help pigs get started on feed. Frequency of feeding for the first week in the nursery is critical. The more times we can be in the barn feeding the pigs, the better they will start. In some cases, just walking through the barn and getting the pigs up will stimulate them to eat.

                        Secondly, identifying fallback pigs as early as possible — early intervention — helps transition those pigs to get them back on track. Use of a gruel or a highly fortified feed is essential to get the right nutrients into these young pigs.

Tom:              Some pigs are naturally inclined to not eat as well while they're transitioning from a liquid to solid diet, so it's important for producers to do what they can to motivate those pigs to eat more. How does Viligen® play a role in this key part of their transition from milk to solids?

Ernie:             Viligen is an intake stimulant. It's combined with certain nutrients and palatability factors that not only encourage them to eat — to eat more, to take that first bite of feed — but it also has gut health components that help support the gut in overcoming challenges that the environment brings to that pig. So, it causes them to eat more and then supports their health. A healthy pig that eats is going to grow faster and more efficiently throughout its entire life.

Tom:              Tell us about the feeding trials using Viligen that were conducted by Hubbard Feeds.

Ernie:             So, we started Viligen trials about nine months ago (Oct. 2017) after an Innovation Group meeting at Alltech. We did some simple trials and the pigs performed well above expectations. We had improvements in gains that were really quite remarkable. We redid the trial and we duplicated those improvements in gains.

                        In the second trial, we had a significantly higher degree of overall health challenges, and we're able to see that we had not only improvements in intake and gains, but that led to improvements in overall health. We treated fewer pigs for health issues, we pulled fewer pigs out of the pens that weren't starting and we had fewer pigs die in the trial.

Tom:              How big of a role does formulation of feed play at this stage when the piglet is transitioning from milk to solids?

Ernie:             Diet formulation plays a critical role for these young pigs as they transition from the sow’s milk to dry starters. Diets are more complex to supply the nutrients that will promote good gut health, which is important for nutrient absorption and utilization. High-quality ingredients are key to the digestibility of the young pig and also reduce the chance of adverse interactions with other ingredients.

                        Finally, ingredients that promote intake are an important technology to include in the nursery diet. People often think of flavors in milk products to encourage intake, but we're excited about Viligen, which our research has shown to improve intake and health in these young pigs. Viligen — which is a blend of fatty acids, prebiotic components and mineral nutrients — helps condition the gut mucosa, which helps get ready for rapid growth because of the improved feed intake.

Tom:              Ernie Hansen, manager of swine nutrition and technical services at Hubbard Feeds, joining us from Mankato, Minnesota. Thank you for being with us, Ernie.

Ernie:             Thank you much.      

I want to learn more about supporting piglet health and feed intake during weaning. 

The following is an edited transcript of Nicole Erwin's interview with Dr. Amanda Adams, an associate professor at the Gluck Equine Research Center at the University of Kentucky. Click below to hear the full audio:

Nicole:         Senior horses make up a large majority of the hobby horse population. Like humans, they have special dietary requirements for the support of healthy aging. How should you feed your senior horse? I'm talking with Dr. Amanda Adams, an associate professor at the Gluck Equine Research Center at the University of Kentucky. Welcome.

Amanda:       Thank you. It's great to be joining you here.

Nicole:         With more than 10 years of experience in the equine health industry, you focus on the immune system of the geriatric horse. Can you talk to me a little bit about what moved you in that direction?

Amanda:       Yeah, sure. I guess from an early age, I had an interest in and studied the immune function or immune system of the horse. In my Ph.D. program, my focus was the impact of old age on these immune responses. After the Ph.D. program, I stayed on for a post-doctorate and continued my research program with the geriatric horse and kind of expounded upon that.

                    We don't just look at how age affects immune responses in these horses, but we're also investigating how senior horses are affected by endocrine diseases and, then, how we can modulate both of these through nutrition. How can we support the immune system through nutrition, and how can we regulate some of these endocrine diseases that aged horses are suffering from? I was born and raised with horses and always had an interest in horses. I think it was a natural movement to go on and make them a career, or part of my career, instead of a hobby.

Nicole:         At what age does a horse enter into the geriatric bracket, or is it different for every horse?

Amanda:       That's a good question. How do we define age? We can define age chronologically by the number of years that the animal may be — 15, 16, 17, 18 years of age. But more so, we're interested in the biological age of the animal. A 30-year-old may be healthier in some circumstances compared to a 25-year-old. It's really about the biological age or what's going on physiologically with that animal; it's not just a number by chronological years.

                    Now, we sort of classified senior horses as being over the age of 15, or in a lot of our work that we do, we consider them to be senior over the age of 20. We see a lot of those physiological changes occurring at the age 20. I tell people, "Don't forget about your 15-to-20-year-old horses.” Over in Europe and Australia, they consider senior horses to be over the age of 15.

Nicole:         Why is that?

Amanda:       It’s just a different population of animals, and I'm not sure actually why they chose 15 as their cut-off. But, when you look at the epidemiological studies that are trying to get demographics around how many old horses are out there, they set their cut-off at 15 years of age and older to determine the percentage of old horses in their populations.

Nicole:         Easier to group things.

Amanda:       Yeah, probably. That's where you start to see maybe some of the horses not being reproductively active, and sort of coming out of being sport or show horses, breeding, et cetera. But it's really not uncommon nowadays to hear of horses in their 20s still performing and breeding. [American Thoroughbred and sire] Northern Afleet is 25 years of age and still standing as a stallion. [Editor’s note: Northern Afleet was euthanized in June 2018, following an illness.] At [Kentucky-based Thoroughbred breeding farm] Taylor Made Farms, you have these Olympic horses still competing at the age of 20.

Nicole:         Wow. It just varies.

Amanda:       It just varies. Yeah.

Nicole:         The overall health of any animal is somewhat of a holistic endeavor: colostrum — the first milk that a mare feeds her foal — to everything that can come after potentially affects the health of the animal. How much can mindful nutrition in the early stages of life prevent issues later?

Amanda:       I think that's a really good question. I think there's more interest in studying that area. There has not been a lot of research in the equine industry to understand the impact of maternal influence on the health and the outcome of the foal itself as the foal ages. I can't really give you an answer to that. I would say what happens early in life may not have an overlapping effect later in life because of the way the immune system essentially develops. There's just very little research done to be able to answer that.

Nicole:         What are some warning signs that a horse's immune system has started to degrade?

Amanda:       If you look at the immune function in a population of senior horses over the age of 20 to 35 years of age, you see varying immune responses. It's not just this continual linear decline over time. In some horses, you may see increased sinusitis issues, abscess, hoof infections and dental abscess problems. It varies. There may not be a warning sign.

                    It's really good to stay up-to-date with your horse's routine vaccination schedule and routine check of fecal egg counts. The gold hallmark is that, across the board, age affects immune responses, whether we're talking about humans, dogs, cats or horses. The number one thing that happens, or the hallmark characteristic of age impacting immune responses, is a failure to respond very well to vaccination.

                    We've done a lot of work in that area and continue to do so to see if perhaps an aged horse might respond better to a different type or platform of vaccines. We still try to make everyone aware — especially if you're still competing, showing, trail riding — that, even though they have a reduced immune response to vaccination, that doesn't mean to just forget about vaccinating them. That just means to maintain a good vaccination schedule.

Nicole:         Is that the larger portion of preventive health for horses, with vaccinations?

Amanda:       Oh, absolutely. It's part of the program, for sure, along with getting an annual or biannual exam, having a dental exam, a body condition scoring and lameness evaluation. I think the biggest area that I am trying to generate more awareness of is having your horse's endocrine status evaluated.

                    As your senior horse starts to develop early signs of equine Cushing’s disease or Pituitary Pars Intermedia Dysfunction (PPID), or if they become insulin-dysregulated, it’s really important to look at early on in the senior years so that you know how to nutritionally manage them throughout their golden years, as we say. It’s very important in making some of those decisions.

Nicole:         Do some of these indicators show that it's time to move toward a more geriatric approach to nutrition? What is that approach?

Amanda:       There's not a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s kind of what I talked about today at the [ONE: The Alltech Ideas] Conference]. The “old gray mare” is not just the old gray mare. In my opinion, and having the herd of geriatric horses at the University of Kentucky, we see six different types of senior horses. It's a broad spectrum, from the hard keeper to the easy keeper, to the endocrine-diseased horse, to the horse that is susceptible to develop laminitis because they're insulin-dysregulated.

                    It's not a one-size-fits-all dietary program to support the geriatric horse. You really need to work with your vet to understand if your horse has been affected by any of these endocrine diseases and make sure there aren’t dental problems, then work backwards from there to design a nutritional foundation for those horses.

Nicole:         Are certain breeds more likely to have endocrine issues?

Amanda:       Absolutely. Especially, if we're talking about insulin dysregulation, we know that certain breeds are more predisposed, such as your Morgans, your Walkers and warmbloods. When we talk about equine Cushing's disease, that can affect any breed.

Nicole:         But having that kind of knowledge as an owner can help you prepare a bit?

Amanda:       Oh, absolutely. Certain breeds are predisposed to being more insulin-dysregulated or not.

Nicole:         Does being able to provide the right nutrition for an aged horse increase cost significantly for owners?

Amanda:       Not necessarily. It doesn't mean that, just because you have a senior horse, you need to feed them a complete feed. If the horse is maintaining body weight and doing well on an all-forage diet and, like I said, maintaining body weight, then there's really, essentially, nothing that you need to change. Just ensure you're feeding a good quality forage. If not, make sure you're balancing it with a ration balancer pellet.

                    If the older horse is having trouble maintaining body weight or are, on the other side of the spectrum, “thrifty,” then you might have to get into some programs that might require more costs, because more calories may equal more cost. It just depends; it's just not a one-size-fit-all approach. I think that's the message: it needs to be a very individualized, tailored program for senior horses.

Nicole:         Some of your work is aimed at improving the function in redox state of the immune system. What does that involve?

Amanda:       We're looking at both applied and basic science questions. Looking at the cellular level, how does age impact immune responses? How well do the immune cells proliferate in response to a pathogen? That capability is reduced with age. There's a new phenomenon called inflammaging, which is a low-grade chronic inflammatory response that occurs as we age — as cats, dogs age — and we've shown that happens in horses.

                    It's a low-grade inflammatory response that we see systemically. That might go hand-in-hand with the oxidative status of the animal. We're still doing quite a bit of research in that area to fully understand what that means for the aged horse.

                    In humans, we know that this inflammaging process contributes to a lot of our age-related diseases: osteoarthritis, maybe even Parkinson's disease, et cetera. But for the old horse, we just don't quite know yet what all of this means. We know that these things are happening, but exactly how that affects their performance and physiological status — we're still unraveling all of that.

Nicole:         Is this a new area of research then?

Amanda:       It really is. I think in human medicine, it's not. As we're all living longer, and our horses are living longer, there's more interest in understanding how increased longevity is impacting these responses. Then can we modulate these responses to help animals live a more successful, healthy life into their golden years.

Nicole:         You're also investigating models of stress for horses. What pushed you in that direction?

Amanda:       Being an immunologist is great because so many different factors impact immune responses, from old age to obesity, and the third arm of my program is investigating the impact of stress on immune responses.

                    It really began by looking at how weaning stress impacts immune responses in horses. Then, that has taken me down the road of looking at the impact of transportation stress and how that may impact the immune response of horses and particularly, older horses that are still going out there and showing and competing. You already have an immune-compromised animal, but then you're adding layers of stress to that. What does that do to the physiological state of the animal? I think it was sort of a natural migration to have a look at that.

Nicole:         What are your hopes for owners’ understanding in geriatric horse care?

Amanda:       Just don't forget about the old horse and assume that, just because you've been vaccinating them year after year after year, that they don't need to be maintained on a vaccination schedule. Definitely maintain a proper vaccination schedule and work with your vet to do that. Make sure to check fecal egg counts on older horses. We've shown that senior horses have higher fecal egg counts and may be higher shedders than younger horses. Keep them on a proper vaccination schedule based on fecal egg counts.

                    Then, don't over-estimate the power that nutrition may have. Basically, we are enhancing or supporting immune function with age in geriatric horses. We've done some work looking at that and showing that nutrition can actually improve immune responses to vaccination in older horses and reduce inflammation or the inflammaging response. I think those are important factors.

                    Also, understand what the endocrine status is of your senior horse — work with your vet on that. Make sure that you have a full understanding of whether they are affected by early-stage equine Cushing's disease or late-stage PPID, if they're insulin-dysregulated or not — that’s really going to help properly design nutritional foundations for them and, then, support them in their later years. Keep up with yearly exams. Looking at all of that is going to support healthy, successful years for the senior horse.

Nicole:         What should owners look for in ingredients to help support vaccinations?

Amanda:       In a couple of big studies that we did with a big feed company — we'd like to investigate a variety of different parameters, but research is costly, so we had narrowed it down to looking at certain components — and some of that work was based on what has been found in human studies as having an impact on immune responses to vaccination. We looked at omega fatty acids and then we looked at prebiotic and probiotic supplementation.

                    We did a couple of big trials, and we were quite surprised to see that it was prebiotic formulation that enhanced some of the immune responses that we saw and measured in some senior horses. I think it just opened the door for more studies to come that show that nutrition is quite powerful and could potentially have an impact on improving immune responses in horses.

Nicole:         Dr. Amanda Adams is an associate professor at the Gluck Equine Research Center at the University of Kentucky. Thank you.

Amanda:       Thank you for having me.

I want to learn more about proper nutrition for senior horses.