The below is an edited transcript of Nicole Erwin's interview with Dr. Rebecca Delles, research scientist in meat chemistry at Alltech. Click below to hear the full interview:

Nicole:           Consumers are increasingly concerned with the quality of their meat and how it's produced. I'm talking with Dr. Rebecca Delles, research scientist in meat chemistry at Alltech. Her research primarily focuses on the impact of nutritional strategies on the oxidative stability of fresh meat products. Welcome, Dr. Delles.

Dr. Delles:     Thank you.

Nicole:           Consumer concerns with meat quality and production kind of brings to mind the old adage “You are what you eat.” How significant would you say this saying is from farm to table? In other words, how does what our meat chooses to eat affect consumer perceptions?

Dr. Delles:     A great deal, to be perfectly honest. I don't think a lot of consumers really think about what the animal eats and how that impacts them at the end of the day. It's amazing how something so small, such as minerals — which are essential not just for you and me, but also for the animal themselves, and we typically add a very small amount within the diet of the animal — makes such a huge impact on the oxidative state of the animal, of the meat, and, ultimately, it will impact your health as well.

Nicole:           So, if animals aren't getting what they need nutritionally, could it lead to something like woody breast syndrome in poultry?

Dr. Delles:     Possibly. It's such a complex issue. To be perfectly honest, it seems like it's a multifactorial issue and that we're not quite sure exactly what's causing it. It could be that the animal themselves aren't getting the proper nutrition to sustain the type of growth rate that we're pushing. That's just due to a genetic selection. It's nothing abnormal that's going on. But it could be partially a genetic predisposition for it. I don't want to say it's just solely a nutritional component because it seems that we have to look at it more in a holistic way.

Nicole:           For people who don't really know what woody breast syndrome is, can you explain that a little bit?

Dr. Delles:     Yeah. The decisive marker is palpatory hardness. Is that fillet, the breast fillet, tough to the touch? That's the identifying marker, but it can range in severity. You have a normal fillet, a mild, moderate and severe. In the mild severity cases, it will be slightly tough to the touch, not too bad, and it will typically just be in one part of the fillet. But when you start seeing it in moderate and severe cases, it will be throughout the whole fillet. In fact, you can see those bulging ridges in not just the cranial portion, but also the caudal region, which is the part that tapers down. So those are typically what you see with the severe cases.

                        In addition to that — it's quite complex — but you can also see signs of inflammation, and that's usually basically bruising on the fillet itself. You see hemorrhages. Also, there can be exudate on the surface of that fillet, and that's only seen in severe cases. That does not reach the consumer.

Nicole:           Animal rights activists have said that the condition is linked to genetics, which you touched on, and market demands that require industries to grow birds bigger and faster, causing muscle tissue to tear. Is that something that you've seen in your research?

Dr. Delles:     They are correct in that there seems to be a genetic component, and it's also associated with growth rate. We are growing these birds quickly and they are big. But it's not dangerous, and we're not doing it in an inhumane way. A lot of times — and I know this starts getting into a whole pool and a different discussion, and I don't want to really go into that — but it benefits producers to have the growth rate of the bird in the production be as humane as possible. They don't want to raise these birds in inhumane conditions. Typically, that slows down growth rate, and it’s likely these animals will become sick. So, it's to the best advantage for the industry to always raise these birds in humane and healthy ways.

Nicole:           When would you say that this problem started to surface, and how much can it actually affect a producer's bottom line?

Dr. Delles:     This has arisen about, I would say, eight years ago, and it was a small percentage. It’s grown substantially over the past seven, eight years. It's also a global issue. We didn't really see it in the United States until about five years ago, but it was more seen in, say, Denmark and other European countries back then.

                        With regard to the United States, the United States government has decided to step in. Before, if you had mild to moderate severity of wooden breast, it would become a downgraded product, so, usually, it would become a processed meat product and be used in something like a hot dog, but not anymore.

                        The United States government decided this is becoming a big issue, and consumers are really making their voices heard, so they've decided to step in, and now they are inspecting and removing that product from that line. It is not a zero-tolerance policy. It's basically what we consider a quality adulteration. We're supposed to be selling the consumer a grade A product, and since it's not a grade A product, it's considered now a quality adulteration.

                        What they've decided to do is have inspectors on the line and personnel within the processing facility trying to minimize what goes to the consumer. What ends up happening is that product is completely removed, so you're having a substantial amount of money being lost. Last year, it was estimated that $200 million in revenue was lost for the United States poultry industry. Now they are anticipating that number will rise to close to half a billion dollars, if not a little bit over.

Nicole:           Well, could woody breasted meat still be cooked and eaten safely?

Dr. Delles:     Yes. It's not dangerous to the consumer. It's not dangerous if you have a tough fillet and you decide to give it to your dog. It's not dangerous whatsoever. The consumer could eat it. They would be fine. It's just more of a palatability issue. They don't like how it tastes. They don't like the texture of it. So, if you were to give it to your dog, that would be perfectly safe for Fido.

Nicole:           Are there ways that you could cook it, maybe, to make it taste a little bit better?

Dr. Delles:     There's been quite a bit of research done by multiple universities throughout the entire world. There’s been work on increasing the palatability of the chicken through a marination approach. Also, you can make a processed meat product with the chicken. For example, you could make a sausage out of it and use other compounds.

Nicole:           So, you're doing a value-added product.

Dr. Delles:     Exactly.

Nicole:           Okay. Woody breast sounds like it would be limited to birds. Are similar characteristics found in other meats that we consume but just simply called by another name? Or is it mainly a poultry problem?

Dr. Delles:     This appears to be just solely a poultry problem. You have the exact opposite issue when we're talking about other quality deterioration within meat products. Pale, soft and exudative meat —  or PSE —  can be seen in poultry, but I wouldn't really characterize that as a myopathy. That's more about how stressed the animal was upon entering the slaughtering facility. That work has been very well-characterized, and we now know what we can do to minimize that impact.

Nicole:           What are some quality issues noticeable in pork?

Dr. Delles:     In pork, mainly it's pale, soft and exudative meat. That issue was probably around 20 years ago. They did a lot of research on that, and they know exactly what causes it. There used to be a genetic component to that as well, but they were able to breed out that issue.

                        Another issue that you can see in pork meat could be dark, firm and dry. Typically, we don't see that very often. You can see it more in beef products.

Nicole:           Can some of these issues be curtailed through nutrition?

Dr. Delles:     Yes, you could take a nutritional approach to it, making sure that you are feeding the animal appropriate diets. But, to be perfectly honest, I think management is the best way to tackle that particular issue.

Nicole:           How holistic should the approach toward a nutritional management plan in livestock be when producers are considering their feed?

Dr. Delles:     I would relate that a lot to what you want in your diet and your lifestyle. People and animals go hand in hand. A lot of times you hate to admit it, but your parents or your guardians are right. You want to eat a healthy, balanced diet, exercise, but everything in moderation. So, when we're talking about animal nutrition, we want to make sure that the animal is cared for in the proper way. You want to feed them the diet that they need to grow properly, to remain healthy, but management is also a very important part of that as well. You don't want these animals to be overly stressed because they're not going to feel hungry. They're not going to eat. They're not going to grow properly. You're completely right when you're talking about looking at it as a holistic approach.

Nicole:           What should consumers keep in mind when they look at a package at the store before buying, if they're trying to consider all of these things?

Dr. Delles:     I would always say, “Eat with your eyes.” You want to make sure that the product looks fresh, looks wholesome and looks like it will be delicious. You want to make sure when you're looking at that product that it looks uniform. You don't want to see some discoloration in certain areas. It’s not that it will be dangerous, it's just that it's been oxidized more so than a product that looks completely pink, such as your pork chop. If you have a completely pink pork chop, you don't want to see little areas of discoloration. Not that it's not fresh, but it just means it's been oxidized. That could be from the nutritional standpoint of the pig or it could be a processing issue or packaging issue. Knowing exactly what that causes is pretty hard to pinpoint when you're just looking at a package.

Nicole:           Anything that you look forward to in our future abilities to alleviate these kinds of concerns?

Dr. Delles:     I hate to say it, but I find the whole wooden breast issue exciting. As a meat scientist, it's fascinating. We have never seen anything like this before. So, meat scientists are all talking, and we all congregate and we all share ideas. Everybody has a different approach to it, which is absolutely fascinating. From a meat scientist standpoint, or even a protein standpoint, it's really amazing to see what can occur when you don't have all the components perfectly together. I see this issue continuing. I see it improving shortly. Hopefully, we'll be able to remove that issue altogether.

                        But what I'm really hoping to see is someone coming up with the exact cause and the complete mechanism of what is going on. To be honest, we will have to figure out the whole biochemical process of the conversion of muscle to meat, and that's going to be quite time-consuming. We've been working on it for decades. Even to this day, people are coming up with new concepts and figuring out small pieces to this whole puzzle. I don't see us having this issue in other animals such as beef or pork.

                        I hate to say it, but I think we might see another myopathy in poultry occurring called spaghetti meat. That seems to be the exact opposite of wooden breast meat, but it seems to be making its way globally and slowly becoming a bigger and bigger issue. It might be because the genetics of these animals are a little more limited than what's seen in the pork and the cattle industry.

Nicole:           With the spaghetti meat, because you mentioned it, is that also safe to consume like the woody breast?

Dr. Delles:     Yes, it's perfectly safe to consume. It's just the exact opposite texture. With woody breast, you typically see fibrosis, which is collagen. You have more connective tissue. When we're talking about spaghetti meat, you don't have as much collagen that's needed to support that muscle fiber —  the whole muscle itself. It’s two ends of a spectrum and it's pretty fascinating to see. I'm hoping that talking to other meat scientists and protein chemists, we'll be able to come up with a solution to the problem soon.

Nicole:           Dr. Rebecca Delles is a research scientist in meat chemistry at Alltech. Thank you so much.

I would like to improve nutritional management in my poultry operation.  

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Robert Walker, CEO of KEENAN, an Alltech Company. Click below to hear the full interview:

Tom:                          The world got a very real taste of the drought-driven water shortages occurring from South Africa and Mozambique to India when Cape Town came very close to “Day Zero” —  the day when water levels in the city's reservoirs would fall below a “red line” of 13.5 percent of capacity and household water supplies would be shut off. Everyone would be forced to queue at water stations for a meager daily ration of H₂O. The city of 4 million people imposed severe water restrictions. The city managed to conserve enough to push Day Zero down the road perhaps for a few months, but not without the help of farmers north of Cape Town, who opened their dams to allow millions of liters of water to flow down to the drought-stricken city. There has been plenty of coverage of how the water shortage has impacted Cape Town. What is less known are its effects on agriculture in the Western Cape province. Robert Walker is the South African-born CEO of KEENAN, an Alltech company that is a global leader in machinery that helps farmers mix feed and distribute it to their animals. The company is a pioneer in the “internet of things” market for agriculture, having merged its range of machinery with innovative digital technologies that enable farmers to feed their animals with precision and consistency. We thank you for joining us, Robbie.

Robert:                       Hi, Tom. Glad to be with you.

Tom:                          So, tell us what the KEENAN team is doing to help farmers in the affected areas around Cape Town cope with this water crisis?

Robert:                       Tom, it’s quite a tragedy, and it's important that everyone pulls together at this moment. The KEENAN and Alltech group are doing three things: We all are participating and are a major driver in the Grass Hope Project. This is an interesting project whereby we are sourcing urban roughage — clippings from gardens, parks and other municipal installations in the center of the city — and we are having all of that delivered to our facility at Alltech. We bale that roughage, and then that gets distributed to farmers. One of the biggest problems is that farmers just don't have enough roughage for the animals.

                                    The second big thing that we're doing that seems to be making an impact is connecting farmers. The farmers in the south of the country around Cape Town really don't have enough roughage, whereas up in the north, you'll have a lot of farmers who have sufficient amounts or have other byproducts that they can give or sell to those farmers themselves. So, we’ve been connecting those farmers so that we can get roughage from the areas of plenty to those in areas of need.

                                    And the last thing we’re doing is helping with the diets of those farms that are affected. Because when they start buying all these different byproducts or use completely different ingredients, these farmers need to have the diets reformulated and reevaluated because they are completely unfamiliar ingredients. And then, of course, they’re changing almost daily. So, those three things seem to be making quite a big impact.

Tom:                          For perspective, how important is agriculture to the socioeconomic makeup of the Western Cape province?

Robert:                       The Western Cape is the garden of sub-Saharan Africa. It is somewhat like what California is to the United States. It's where most of the export-grade fruit is produced. Specifically, you have crops like apples, peaches, plums and pears. You also have a big wine industry — grape industry. So, they are very high-value crops. All of these crops are exported by and large to Europe and the East at a very high value. So, this has hit the South African economy, and really the sub-Saharan African economy, quite hard because that is a major driver of revenue in that geography.

Tom:                          I mentioned in the introduction Mozambique, India and Pakistan also experiencing this kind of situation. Would you say that what we're seeing happening in Cape Town is something of a bellwether that the world should pay attention to?

Robert:                       It certainly is an initial indication of what could be and what seems to be becoming more the norm. What’s important here is that you can see that the infrastructure planning around this problem has just not been there. I'm not accusing governments, necessarily. What I'm saying is that the infrastructure is not suited to or adept at addressing these problems. So, it’s probably wise for a lot of these different countries and municipalities around the world to start thinking about what they should be doing in this case. Cape Town is a very good example of where a lot of countries and cities are going.

Tom:                          I wonder what specific issues have come up as your team has become more familiar with this water crisis situation.

Robert:                       As a company, we’re mostly focused on the animal side. The biggest issue that we’re seeing is, first of all, roughage —  availability of feed stuffs. What’s quite bizarre, Tom, is that you have situations where, for example, a ton of corn might be cheaper than a ton of soya hulls or a ton of wheat bran. The cost of just basic, very cheap roughage is just spiraling out of control. That makes it very difficult to deal with from a production perspective.

                                    Then, of course, you’ve got the bigger problem of the national herd. So, animals are being culled. And, of course, you’re not only losing numbers, but you’re also losing genetics. In the near future, when we need to bounce back, it can be very difficult to start breeding again.

                                 On the crop side, fruits are probably going to be the most affected. As I previously mentioned, that region is renowned for its export- quality fruit, and it is an export-based economy, but the low rainfalls have meant that the fruit quality is just terrible. It’s very difficult to achieve export-grade fruits, which means that you end up with a glut of low-quality fruits on the local market but no export-quality fruit. There are some quite profound changes that I think are going to have some quite long-term effects.

Tom:                          It looks like Cape Town has, for now at least, dodged the “Mad Max” scenario, by cutting residents’ average water use in half. But thanks to this drought that really is showing no sign of abating, the city could soon become the world's first major urban area to run out of water. Is the KEENAN team hearing much talk about linking this situation to climate change?

Robert:                       Well, farmers like to talk. And, certainly, there's a lot of talk of climate change. In fact, this situation has been building since about 2015. Farmers there on the ground will be telling us that they've noticed a change in the weather. The winters have been warmer for the last three years, and they aren't getting that fog that they're accustomed to in the winter. What's interesting to note, though, is that a lot of the farmers have said that this year they've noticed a change in the weather. The weather seems to have returned to more of a normal pattern. A lot of those farmers have actually planted. Based on that, they think that this situation is about to resolve and that the rains will come as normal. So, yes, farmers are thinking that it is climate change-related, but that’s very much about farmers who know the weather and just going by their own instincts.

Tom:                          Interesting. Some positive thinking going on there. Are conservation efforts being imposed in Cape Town in the rural farming areas? Are they taking things in hand in that way?

Robert:                       Yes. There have been quotas instituted in the rural areas, so farmers are severely restricted on what they can do and where they can get their water. What has been positive about this, though, is the community spirit, and this attitude of helping one’s neighbor. That has really brought farmer and city together, which has been a quite unexpected upside of this disaster.

Tom:                          That sharing of water, for example.

Robert:                       Yes. Absolutely. There has been a sharing of water. The farmers have extended a helping hand to the city.

Tom:                          And the farmers — or at least the associations they belong to —  operate their own private dams. Is that correct?

Robert:                       Yes, they do. So, most of the farmers in South Africa have fairly large pieces of the land, and a majority of them would have owned water, whether that comes from boreholes, wells or dams. There's normally a good supply of water on those farms.

Tom:                          Are those privately owned dams in better shape than the municipal ones in Cape Town?

Robert:                       Yes. Absolutely. The privately owned dams are not full, but they are located further up in the mountains, so they tend to have remained at decent levels. There is water there.

Tom:                          The Cape Town situation is hardly resolved. It’s going to take years of this austerity before the reservoirs refill, if they ever do. The six major dams that make up the city's water supply system are, at present, an average of 19 percent full. City officials are saying the dams will have to recover to at least 40 to 50 percent in order to avoid drastic water rationing during the summer of 2019. What are the prospects for that level of recovery? I know that you say the farmers are pretty optimistic about it.

Robert:                       The farmers are quite optimistic, but this is going to take a long time to resolve. So, for example, a lot of the farmers have had to cut their production. They’re irrigating only small parcels of land. There are prospects of recovery, certainly on the production side, but it’s going to be a slow road to recovery. When it comes to how quickly those dams are going refill, it's very difficult to say. There is a positive outlook for the coming season, certainly from the farmer’s own feeling, as well as from the meteorological services, but it's going to be a long road to recovery. A lot of those farmers have also supplied a lot of their water from their dams into the city. Those dams, as you said, are now also reaching critical levels.

Tom:                          In the meantime, Cape Town is implementing some stiff water tariff increases. Are those additional costs likely to impact farms in the province, or do they rely solely on their private sources?

Robert:                       No. The farmers generally rely on their own private sources, but they will be subject to quotas. In the city, the tariffs are very steep. The cost of water is very high, and the usage of water is very low on a per-person basis.

Tom:                          Do you hear anything about the possibility of desalination as a solution? I know they tried it in Adelaide, Australia, for example, and it's had mixed results, but is there talk of that in South Africa?

Robert:                       There’s certainly a lot of talk of that, and it goes back to what I was saying a little bit about the government infrastructure and planning. A lot of people are quite angry, saying that there should have been better planning to avoid this situation. When it comes to desalination, there's a lot of talk about it.

                                    There is an ongoing project — I'm certainly not up to date on it —  but it is seen as something that is going be quite small and won’t necessarily satisfy all the needs. It's expected to help in times of emergency. A lot of the farmers are now drilling new wells and they are still finding groundwater, much like the crisis that hit California a couple years ago, where farmers’ wells started running dry. I think we still haven’t gotten to the stage where farmers’ wells are running dry, and there’s still scope for drilling new wells. The disaster, or the lack of water, really is very much in the Cape Town region, the city itself. Of course, farmers are suffering, but there is still water.

Tom:                          There's an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Crises often have ways of inspiring innovation. Has that happened in this case?

Robert:                       I think innovation is going to take some time. There certainly seems to be a lot of innovative projects ongoing. One of the things that has happened is that farmers are very carefully assessing how they plan their production. For example, the farmers who raise high-value fruits and vegetables have decided to only irrigate smaller portions of their land. They give all of their resources to only a limited amount of the crop so that they can guarantee to get export-quality fruit. They can then export that fruit rather than have a mediocre crop across the land.

                                    So, you have this attention to detail and attention to a very small part of their production. There has been a very big move toward conservation. Drip irrigation has certainly been taken up, and a lot of the technology ... has certainly been adopted. As a company, we focus a lot on efficiency of production. What’s important is that farmers are able to use fewer resources to do more. We are finding that farmers are very open to listening when we speak to them about new technologies, whether it be technologies for the animals or crops in terms of nutrition, or whether it’s mixing technologies for their machinery or digital technologies just to monitor all of that.

                                    They certainly seem to be open to listening and want to improve efficiency, because a more efficient system is obviously going to be better for the environment and give better results in the end. So, I do expect more innovation to come through, and it's exciting to see that farmers are able to be so innovative and adaptive in this kind of situation.

Tom:                          Do you anticipate keeping your team in South Africa's Western Cape province for the foreseeable future?

Robert:                       Absolutely. The team is doing a fantastic job. From that Cape Town region, we are able to work into the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It is very much a springboard for us into Africa. What we've managed to do there is tie in our machinery division, our nutrition division and our crop division so that we can give 360-degree support to farmers. That Western Cape region is very vibrant. It is the center of agriculture in the region. We have no intention of leaving it.

Tom:                          Robbie, this is a very personal thing for you. We’re talking about your home. You must have some pretty strong feelings about what's going on there.

Robert:                       Absolutely, it is. There’s a mixture of anger, sometimes, because you often think the government could do more or they could have planned better, but then again, this is nature. It's difficult to judge. South Africa is very prone to drought. This drought in this region is really just an extension of the drought that has happened previously in the northern parts of the country. South Africa is prone to bad weather or weather variations, extreme weather, and it seems to be getting worse and worse. Certainly, as someone who's involved in agriculture, I find that heartbreaking. It's very difficult to see the situation and, yes, hard to watch.

Tom:                          Robbie Walker, CEO of KEENAN, thank you so much for taking the time.

Robert:                       Great. Thanks very much, Tom.

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Tom Lorenzen, on-farm dairy specialist with Alltech. Click below to hear the full interview:

Tom:                          The heat and humidity of summer can take a substantial toll on herd health and productivity. Understanding heat stress is critical for producers managing herds in warm, humid climates. Alltech’s Tom Lorenzen is an on-farm dairy specialist with a focus on dairy audits and education through milking technician schools and presentations on milk quality. He's with us to talk about nutritional approaches to the prevention of heat stress during the summer months. Thanks for being with us, Tom.

Tom L:                        Thank you.

Tom:                          First, for reference, can you define the characteristics of a heat wave?

Tom L:                        Well, that's a great question. The people in Wisconsin had almost 20 to 30 inches of snow this past weekend, so they’re probably not going to talk about a heat wave! But we're talking about heat stress with the dairy cow. That's when the environmental conditions are out of the optimal range for the cow, which is between 25 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tom:                          What factors determine when it’s severe? How do you know when it's really bad?

Tom L:                        Air temperature, relative humidity and air movement, solar radiation —they all affect heat stress. Under mild heat stress, we see cows breathing rapidly. As the temperature increases or the stress increases, we see the breathing rates increase in cows, too. I always say to stop, look and listen to your cows. When I watch the cows and I see that their mouths are wide open and they’re panting rapidly, you can be assured that they’re under heat stress. Cows can reduce their heat stress a little bit by sweating, but they sweat about 1 percent compared to humans.

Tom:                          What are the effects? What happens to the cow when they come under stress like this?

Tom L:                        We see cows panting and increased drooling. This reduces the amount of saliva going into the rumen, which will have a negative effect on the buffering of the rumen. This can lead to acidosis. We will see reduced feed intakes, reduced rumination and the bottom line: reduced milk yield.

Tom:                          Are there regions that tend to suffer more periods of heat stress than other areas?

Tom L:                        Yes. That’s a great question. In the United States, we're going see more heat stress with higher temperatures and humidity if you’re looking at the southeast parts of United States, including Florida, Alabama and Georgia.

Tom:                          What can happen to levels of milk production when this happens, especially during prolonged periods of heat stress?

Tom L:                        When cows suffer from heat stress, the first thing we’ll notice is reduced feed intake. They just don't go to the bunk. When we see that happen, we see reduced milk yield, as much as 8 pounds of milk per day.

Tom:                          Do you see effects on reproduction?

Tom L:                        Definitely. It affects fertility and reproduction. It leads to longer lactations or more open days. We see a compound effect where there are other health issues in regard to heat stress.

Tom:                          There are some obvious mechanical means of reducing heat stress: fans, sprinklers, those sorts of things. What about nutritional strategies?

Tom L:                        The first one I’m going to talk about is water. Water is very, very important. Water makes up about 85 percent of the content of milk. So, as the temperature goes up, so does the cow’s water requirement. Cows can drink up to 50 percent more water when the temperature and humidity index rises. Intake can go from 20 gallons to about 32 gallons of water per day when the temperature gets above 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

                                    One of the big things I notice when I’m working with dairy is making sure the water troughs are clean and scrubbed daily in order to provide adequate water for consumption. If we can’t drink it, how can we expect the cows to drink it? We need to make sure that we provide adequate water space — 3 feet of available water for at least 10 to 15 cows is important.

Tom:                          Another factor in nutritional strategies would be energy. Why is it essential to increase the energy density of the diet during heat waves?

Tom L:                        As the temperature increases, the cows decrease their feed intake. This decrease in feed intake can result in less nutrient absorption. So, by increasing energy density of the diet, we can help maintain energy requirements. A good feed source for energy is bypass fat in the diet.  

Tom:                          Let's move on to protein. How is protein intake influenced by heat stress?

Tom L:                        Like everything else, when we increase heat stress, we see less dry matter intake, which means lower protein levels during this period. This will give us a negative nitrogen balance. This leads to a dramatic decrease in milk yield, immune responses and reproduction. One way to help mitigate the decline in protein ingestion is to increase protein density in the ration as well as to make sure we provide a ruminal-digestible protein source.

Tom:                          I understand that during these periods of high heat, it’s really important to maintain fiber levels in the diet. It’s crucial, but there is this catch: the digestion of forages creates more heat. How should that conflict be mitigated?

Tom L:                        During heat stress conditions, there’s a greater risk for rumen acidosis due to slug feeding and decreased intake. To reduce this risk, maintaining fiber levels in the diet is crucial. However, forages have a higher heat increment, so the quality and degradability of the forage should be monitored. Good-quality forages that will be quickly digested in the rumen will contribute to the health of the rumen and will also help maintain milk production with a minimum impact of increased caloric diets.

Tom:                          And, finally, minerals. What are the roles of minerals in helping cows combat heat stress?

Tom L:                        As I mentioned, heat stress causes increased salivation. Saliva is one of the most important buffers that the cow creates on her own. To provide another buffer, we look at increasing sodium, potassium or magnesium to help reduce the stress during this period.

Tom:                          What management tips can you offer producers as they prepare for the hot summer months?

Tom L:                        We need to provide ample clean water at all times. Another important part is providing fans and sprinklers to help cool the cows. We also need to provide shade. One of the biggest challenges that I run into on a dairy is overcrowding. If we’re overcrowded, the cows are not going to have ample room to eat and lay down. These are all important things. Lastly, and very importantly, we want to provide some of our checks that we do during the week such as pregnancy checks, or if we’re going to move cows, or breed cows, we want to do that early in the morning to reduce cow stress.

Tom:                          Thank you, Tom. We appreciate your time.

Tom L:                        Have a great day.

Tom:  Tom Lorenzen is an on-farm dairy specialist for Alltech

Click here to download a free dairy heat stress poster.

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

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Dr. Kayla Price, poultry technical manager for Alltech Canada. Click below to hear the full interview:

After you read or hear this interview, you may never look at an egg quite the same way again. Dr. Kayla Price is poultry technical manager for Alltech Canada. Price joined Tom Martin from Ontario, Canada, to talk about eggshell quality and why it matters.

Tom:                          For this discussion, we're focusing on the outside of the egg. Let's first go to the basic question: What is eggshell quality? What does that mean?

Kayla:                         I think eggshell quality means different things to different people. And when we focus on the outside of the egg specifically, we’re looking at things like eggshell thickness, what is the eggshell strength, how difficult or how easy is it to actually break that egg. And then, what does that egg look like in terms of dirty spots on it, or anything else to that effect. The external quality is very different than the internal quality. But, for this podcast, we're just focusing on the outside of the egg.

Tom:                          And do the uses of eggs vary according to how they are graded?

Kayla:                         Absolutely. If you look at the grading system — and it's only a little bit different where I'm from in the Canadian grading system versus in the U.S. or even globally — there are some basic commonalities. We’re looking at eggs of different sizes, which can go from small to large, extra-large or jumbo. Most of what you see that comes to the table is going to be that larger size, whereas the other sizes may be beneficial in terms of eggs that come in cartons, so they're already cracked, versus the eggs that would be table eggs. You also have lower-graded eggs that may have a small crack on them or a small dirt spot, but the inside is still usable.

Tom:                          Are there specific strategies for developing quality shells of different sizes?

Kayla:                         In general, the hen is always going to be laying the same part of the egg, whether that egg is small, large or extra-large. So, when we talk about eggshell quality, we’re really talking about it in general. We really want that hen to be getting the nutrients and the management that she needs in order to build the shell of that egg.

                                    That being said, with the hen, she's laying the same amount of shell components whether she's young and laying a small egg or whether she's older and laying a larger egg. So, in that bird that is older or toward the extra-large, that same amount of shell component is going to cover a different amount of space versus that same amount of shell component on a small egg. But again, we can use the same management techniques regardless of the size of that egg, because you're trying to avoid those under-grade eggs, which are your dirty eggs or your cracked eggs, regardless of the size.

Tom:                          Okay. Now, if I’m going after a premium quality egg, what are the essentials that I need to take into consideration?

Kayla:                         When I start thinking of the word “premium,” I'm really looking for an egg that is going to have a good, hard shell to it, so it will not break easily. It won't break when it’s at the farm, when it’s moving to the processing plant and, ultimately, it won’t break when it's in the carton before we break that egg to put in the skillet. We’re looking for that outside eggshell quality just as much as that internal quality, like making sure that the yolk looks good and the egg white looks good.

                                    In terms of the essentials, there are a couple of things to consider. You can start looking at the nutrition of the bird — what goes into making that eggshell just as much as the internal component — and you also have to start thinking about management: the health of that bird, how old is that bird and what needs to be changed depending on the age, the environment and, to a small extent, the genetics. The things that we can change would certainly be nutrition management, health and environment.

Tom:                          At what point in bird's life cycle should producers start thinking about egg development and eggshell quality?

Kayla:                         I think that's a really interesting question because when people start thinking about eggshell quality, the first thing that comes to mind is when the hen actually starts laying that egg, which is about halfway through her full lifespan. If you only start looking at eggshell quality halfway through, then you’re really only capturing half the potential. I think it's really important to start having that conversation when that poulet or hen starts to be placed in her housing system and continue all the way through the growing phase, before she reaches the age of maturity to be producing an egg and then also continuing it through. The idea being that you're setting up the bird for proper body confirmation and skeletal development, which are going to have an impact on the eggshell quality — shell thickness, —  just as much as they impact the size of the egg and how well the bird can lay that egg. So, again, I think it's important to start thinking about things from the very start, as opposed to when that hen starts laying that egg.

Tom:                          Why should calcium receive particular attention?

Kayla:                         Calcium is something that people always go to when they start thinking about eggshells because many people know the eggshell has a good amount of calcium within it. So, this is the first thing that people start thinking about. It is incredibly important because the eggshell itself is about 95 percent calcium carbonate. One of the main components of calcium carbonate is calcium. So, this is something that certainly needs particular attention.

Tom:                          Is the size of the calcium particle important?

Kayla:                         Yes, it is. This is something that people in the industry are taking more notice of. It’s important to talk about the different sizes. So, you can go from a fine calcium particle size to a medium calcium particle size to a coarse calcium particle size.

                                    What’s important is, you have to think of the fine calcium size as giving that quick shot of calcium. The bird can absorb it quite quickly because they don't need to break it down at all. But, if you start moving toward the coarse calcium, this one is good because it takes more time for that bird to break down the calcium and a longer amount of time for that bird to absorb the calcium. This is important as the bird goes into nighttime and starts really putting that calcium onto the shell or laying down that shell, because when it’s nighttime, she’s not eating. This slow release or slow breakdown of coarse calcium really helps out during this time.

                                    It’s not that you only need one or only the other — you need a good combination of both. This changes as the bird gets older. As the bird gets older, you’re tending toward going more and more coarse but still having a certain amount of fine particle size in there. It’s really about knowing your ratios, and that's where the nutritionist can help in terms of how to deal with the fine-to-coarse calcium ratio.

Tom:                          What other nutrition elements such as minerals can impact eggshell quality, and how?

Kayla:                         In terms of other nutrition elements, I think it's important to start thinking about what they are. As I said before, when people think of eggs, they often think of calcium in terms of the actual eggshell, but there are other components to it.

                                    In the eggshell itself, you have an inner as well as an outer shell membrane. That outer shell membrane is the calcium carbonate, and the inner shell membrane is made of many other components. You want to make sure that you're building strength, not just in your outer shell membrane, but also in that inner shell membrane. This is really where other nutritional elements come into play — like minerals, which have a very important role in building that eggshell, somewhat in terms of the outer, but also somewhat in terms of the inner shell membrane.

                                    For example, minerals like copper, which helps a little bit in collagen formation in terms of that eggshell membrane. Similarly, minerals like manganese and zinc, each sort of playing their own different role. Then you can look to minerals like selenium, which supports the reproductive tract itself.

                                    So, these elements, and components like that carbonate component of calcium carbonate, or all other elements that are important for the actual eggshell quality, have very different roles to play within the whole system itself.

Tom:                          How is eggshell quality impacted by gut health? Is there a direct relationship?

Kayla:                         It's more of an indirect relationship. I always say that the bird is ultimately a gut with lots of things attached to it. That can be applied to any bird that we want to talk about because, ultimately, what we're putting into the bird and having that bird eat, we want it to be able to translate into the performance factors as well as health factors.

                                    In this case, with the laying hen, a hen that is going to provide us our table eggs, we want our feed ultimately to translate into table eggs, or more table eggs, at the end of the day. So, if we have a gut that is healthy and that is acting the way we want it to, it means this gut is able to absorb nutrients and translate those nutrients as well as absorb things like calcium, like minerals and, ultimately, translate that so it can be used within that reproductive tract or other places within the body. So, direct, perhaps not, but certainly indirect, and there is a role between them.

Tom:                          What are some of the more common problems being encountered today by egg producers that they're trying to work around or work through?

Kayla:                         There are always many different kinds of problems, and new problems evolve as we keep raising these birds. But I think the one specifically related to the egg itself at the moment would be — that isn’t related to viral issues, which are certainly happening in the industry and are very important and I wouldn't want to ignore — but relating specifically to the egg, would be looking at things like deep cracks in the eggs, especially as people start either thinking or moving toward, or are already using, these alternative housing systems. You want to make sure you have a nice strong egg that is not going to be easily cracked by other things happening within the system just as much as you want to make sure you have a good internal eggshell quality, and you want to make sure that you are able to maintain that food safety aspect so that you're able to provide safe food or safe eggs, ultimately, for the public that is consuming those eggs. So, those would be common problems encountered by egg producers. And, again, the biggest one being those downgraded eggs, which would be your cracks, which would be your dirty eggs.

Tom:                          What does it mean to support the good guys in relation to eggshell quality?

Kayla:                         I think it's a very interesting phrase, “supporting the good guys.” It relates back to this indirect relationship between gut health and eggshell quality. So, ultimately, with gut health, we want to make sure we're maintaining a healthy and well-balanced gut, meaning that in the gut, there can be good microbes or good bacteria. There can be bad bacteria or bad microbes, or those that are potentially bad. Those that are potentially bad are opportunistic. Given the right environment, they will become bad or they will become a problem.

                                    When we relate back to gut health, we want to make sure we have this balance between our good guys, our potentially bad guys and our bad guys. In order to help with gut health and, ultimately, help with how that gut is able to digest and absorb nutrients and then translate this within the body to help with the egg and the eggshell, we want to make sure that we're supporting those beneficial bacteria — or supporting the good guys. The end goal is to maintain good gut health.

Tom:                          How do you manage and sustain that balance?

Kayla:                         There are a couple different factors. It's never just one thing that's going to solve the problem. Everyone always looks for that silver bullet, but when it comes to animals and to biology, a silver bullet is almost an impossible goal. You want to make sure that there is a good combination of management practices. We want to make sure that we're using the best practices in managing the birds, just as much as biosecurity on the farm — which is incredibly important as we start thinking about other viral or bacterial problems that can potentially impact these birds — and the type of nutrition that these birds are receiving.

                                    We want to make sure that they are receiving the best nutrition possible with the best ingredients possible. We want to make sure that those ingredients are free from contaminants like mycotoxins and use minerals in their best possible form that are most available and well-absorbed by the bird. This would be things like organic trace minerals versus what is very commonly used as inorganic trace minerals.

                                 And then also making sure when we talk about management, we want to make sure that there's proper water quality. At the end of the day, we just want to make sure we have a good combination program within the diet and the nutrition, a good feed additive program, to help with that just as much as a good management program and good biosecurity.

Tom:                          Dr. Price, when we began the conversation, I said we were going to focus on the outside of the egg, but I'm wondering, does the internal quality of an egg in some way impact the quality of its shell?

Kayla:                         That’s an interesting question because we're still talking about the egg itself. But when we talk about the internal quality of the egg, we're really talking about aspects like the yolk color, what the yolk looks like or how high that yolk is, just as much as what the egg white looks like and how that egg white spreads. So, in terms of if the internal eggshell quality is going to have a direct effect on how easily or if the shell cracks, possibly not. I think this is more of an indirect relationship where if you're focusing on a good quality internally and externally, ultimately, you're going to have a good-quality egg overall. That’s really the target: making sure we have a good-quality egg that is safe for consumers.

Tom:                          Are there some programs for enhancing eggshell quality that you recommend?

Kayla:                         I think this goes back to that combination program. Again, it's important to look at not only management, biosecurity and nutrition, but also the feed additive program.

                                 We touched a little bit on organic trace minerals and making sure that you're using organic trace minerals that are bioavailable to the bird, supporting good absorption and using other additive components that can help in terms of supporting those good guys or supporting the beneficial bacteria within the gut.

                                    This can mean using components like mannan-enriched fractions, which help selectively remove bad bacteria and allow room for good bacteria to thrive. There are plenty of other feed additive components that can be built into a program to make sure that you have a comprehensive program on the feed additive side. That can be combined with a full program on the nutrition side and with management and biosecurity.

Tom:                          Are there any emerging trends in poultry out there that you're watching that have captured your interest and attention?

Kayla:                         Yes. There are always some new and interesting things. Unfortunately, sometimes it relates to viruses. I think something to watch in the layer world — people have been talking about this virus — is false layer syndrome. We are certainly watching how this can be handled. This is one of many emerging things, along with making sure that we have the right biosecurity to avoid any other possible avian influenza outbreaks, which we haven't seen at all lately. Hopefully, we will not see any in the future. And, of course, making sure that we do what we can to achieve fewer cracks and dirty eggs.

                                 So, there are a couple of different things to watch out for. Another one is the constant concern about food safety and making sure that we're producing safe food for our consumers and being transparent in showing that we’re producing safe food for our consumers. 

                                    Those are a couple of different things that really grab my attention and I will continue to follow.

Tom:                          Dr. Kayla Price is poultry technical manager for Alltech Canada.  And thank you so much for joining us.

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Dr. Anna Catharina Berge, veterinarian and owner of Berge Veterinary Consulting. Click below to hear the full interview:

Dr. Anna Catharina Berge, owner of Berge Veterinary Consulting BVBA, is a veterinarian with extensive knowledge and skills combining real-life animal husbandry with epidemiological perspectives of animal and public health challenges. Berge joins Tom Martin from Vosselaar, Belgium, to discuss the use of, and alternatives to, antibiotics in pig production.

Tom:                          Let’s begin with pig production. Is antimicrobial use in pig production a real threat?

Catharina:                 All antimicrobial use has the potential to increase antimicrobial resistance in bacteria. Antimicrobials are really vital to humans and animals to protect against bacteria that can cause disease or death. Antimicrobial resistance is threatening the efficacy of these valuable drugs to treat bacterial disease. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) stated in 2014 that the antimicrobial resistance situation is so serious that we are entering a post-antibiotic era in which common infections and minor injuries can kill. This is far from being an apocalyptic fantasy — it’s a very real possibility for the 21^st century. This is not just some journalists writing up some fearful scenario. This was the WHO. So, it is a real threat.

                                 Microbial resistance in pig production is usually a consequence of decades of antibiotic use for disease prophylaxis or growth promotion. The antibiotics administered are not completely absorbed by the animals. If you’re giving an antibiotic to an animal, 30 to 90 percent of those antibiotics are actually excreted through the urine or feces. The antibiotics can reach the source through medical waste, improper drugs or even from dust from pens in barns. These antibiotic residues can also impact the environment and disturb the delicate ecological balance.

                                 Antibiotic-resistant bacteria may also spread into a virus through other mechanisms. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria may also spread to humans through food or through the environment. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria don't just disappear if we stop using antibiotics. They tend to linger. They’re easily created, but they don't tend to disappear quickly. Therefore, we need to do everything to not increase this pool of resistant disease that can spread between different types of bacteria. These resistant diseases can spread from bacteria that are not dangerous and just hanging around in our dust to those bacteria that are really causing disease and even death. If that resistant disease finds bacteria that cause death, then we have a bacterial disease that can’t be treated, and we may die from it. So, resistance is dangerous.

                                 Antibiotic resistance is also an increasing challenge on many pig farms because producers are noticing that good old antibiotics are not working any longer because bacteria become resistant to them. So, they use newer and newer antibiotics. And this newer antibiotic is what the WHO now calls critical antibiotics, those that we want to maintain to treat humans against dangerous disease, so we’re building up resistance to all of these newer antibiotics. The problem is, there are really no new antibiotics created today. The pharmaceutical industry has stopped investing in the research and development of new antibiotic drugs, so we're running out of good drugs to treat bacteria.

Tom:                          You have noted that herd-level immunity, individual pig gut health, systemic immunity, nutritional status, stress levels, and environmental conditions all interact. Why is it important to understand these interactions?

Catharina:                 No animal, organ or cell works in isolation. They all work closely together and, hopefully, in harmony. They all influence each other. So, a pig, furthermore, is living within a very complex production system where you have various factors that can influence its health and productivity. So, unless you take the whole system into account and evaluate this whole system, you don't really know the cost of a disease or why the pig is not doing well. You may think the cause is something other than disease, but it’s really the disease as a consequence of the production system.

                                    Our production systems have not been optimized for what the pig needs and what we want from the pig. We are trying to adapt the pig to our production systems instead of adapting our systems to the pig. This is creating a problem, and one of the solutions has been to medicate with antibiotics.

Tom:                          What challenges do antibiotics pose to the gut health of pigs and livestock?

Catharina:                 Antibiotics can prevent bacteria from reproducing or destroy bacteria. These antibiotics don't differentiate between bacteria that are good for the body and those that are potentially harmful. Some antibiotics work on different threats to the bacteria and some can work against a lot of bacteria types. Others work against just a few.

                                 Many of these antibiotics are used in the feed in pig production for extended periods of time. They have what we call a broad spectrum. They work against a lot of different bacteria. An example of such is tetracycline. These antibiotics can modify the gut flora and reduce diversity of the bacteria in the gut. Therefore, many good bacteria that are helping in many different ways are killed. Some harmful bacterial also are killed, but when the good gut flora is destroyed, then the pathogenic, harmful bacteria have a bigger chance to reproduce and attack the intestinal lining, maybe even invade the body and cause disease. It’s really essential to create a good microbial flora in the pig, and these antibiotics can actually work against them in that way.

Tom:                          Globally, farmers are now showing that it is possible to reduce antimicrobial use without sacrificing performance in health. A key focus has been placed on gut health. Why is gut and intestinal health in pigs so important?

Catharina:                 It’s key to a healthy animal. The gut is responsible for the digestion and absorption of nutrients that are necessary for the whole body to function properly. Through the food ingested, the pig gets energy — macronutrients and micronutrients — to fuel and support the functions of every single cell in the body. So, if the gut is not working, then the pig’s overall health will suffer.

                                  It’s in the gut that the immune system encounters many potential pathogens that are harmful bacteria. These need to be stopped before they start destroying the intestinal linings or invade the body. In the gut, we have the most immune cells of the whole body. This immunity has high requirements for energy and nutrients and must be in top shape for protecting the pig. If you don't have good gut health, then the immune system doesn't have enough energy to do good work.

                                 A healthy gut, furthermore, has a microflora of bacteria that participates in the digestion of many nutrients. These healthy gut microflora also prevent pathogens from growing and invading intestinal cells. This microflora shows a high level of diversity, and every bacteria species influence each other. So, the healthy gut microflora is also critical to a healthy gut.

Tom:                          What do you think will be the best measures to reduce antibiotic use?

Catharina:                 I like the holistic approach. The best measure to decrease antibiotic use is to optimize the production system and nutrition to better meet the pig’s basic needs.

                                 A first step is to create awareness of the consequences of our antibiotic medicating system and motivate people to change. It’s important for producers to understand that reductions in antibiotic use can be made without compromising the health of the animal or their productivity. But it requires an evaluation of the whole production system and nutrition to identify the weaknesses in every single system because every single system we enter is different.

                                 The easiest part to change is nutrition for the pig and making sure that it’s correct for every single stage of its life and that the pig is not exposed to high levels of bacteria or mycotoxins in the feed and the water. Thereafter, we are starting to look at management changes and housing changes to meet the physiological needs of the animals and protect them from disease from inside and outside the unit. That’s also called “biosecurity,” and that's very important. Thereafter, we need to start looking at how we can boost immunity so that the pig is then able to meet all the challenges.

Tom:                          Among the farms you are working with, what percentage of reduction do you think is realistically achievable?

Catharina:                 I would say most farmers across the world are still using a lot of antibiotics prophylactically to prevent disease, or they use it for growth promotion. And I believe that all of that use can stop. There, again, there has to be a motivation of the producer to change. But, in general, if we go onto a farm, a realistic goal we usually can see without too much of a challenge is a 50 percent reduction in antimicrobial use already within the first year.

Tom:                          What are the components that should be included in any antibiotic reduction program?

Catharina:                 There was a philosopher in 1850 that said if you don't record it, you can’t improve it. So, you have to have an antibiotic use registration system and you have to evaluate it. It’s not enough just to jot down a few notes in a book somewhere. You have to evaluate. Then you have to set targets. You have to ask, “How can I achieve this reduction with those targets?” You need to look at the appropriate nutrition for every single stage of production. All the pigs, based upon where they are and how old they are, have different needs. You need to have appropriate nutrition. You also have to have very good, quality feeds — low microbial levels and low mycotoxin levels. Then you need to look at the management level. How are you moving the pigs around the system? Are you weaning them too young? Are you stressing them at different phases by mixing litters, and so on? So, management systems are very important.

                                 Housing systems need to be evaluated. Many times, we have pigs in old systems where it’s really not optimized for holding them, and we may need to consider rebuilding on a long-term scale.

                                 A very important part is biosecurity. Biosecurity is what we call “disease protection.” You need to protect the animals from disease that is found inside the uterus. That’s called “internal biosecurity.” You also need to protect the pigs from diseases that are not on the farm currently, but could be introduced by animals, vehicles and people. That’s called “external biosecurity,” and that's very important.

                                  You also need to be able to correctly diagnose and treat the clinical diseases in the best way. People don’t always understand what they're seeing and how it should be best treated.

                                 And of course, we have the alternatives to antibiotics that are valuable tools to support health and productivity. We have products that can support microflora in the gut and optimize the strength of the gut lining such as Bio-Mos® and Actigen®.

                                 We have alternatives to boost immunity. Vaccines, for example, are vital to protect the pigs against many diseases. Organic minerals are important to boost the immune system and help the immune system work optimally. So, all of those components are appropriate and are very important to consider in a program.

Tom:                          You have suggested that the goal to reduce antibiotic use should be rephrased to a goal to produce healthy production systems. How do producers look at this challenge as an opportunity instead of a threat?

Catharina:                 Well, I think for that exact reason: Health is not a threat. It’s something we all strive for, whether in our bodies, a healthy business, healthy ecosystem or healthy planet. And producers are realizing more and more that diseases are costly. Furthermore, there is no joy in working with sick animals. Honestly, I have yet to meet a pig producer that tells me that he or she wants to use antibiotics. It’s rather that they believe it's necessary to prevent disease. When we start showing that we can remove the antibiotics without suffering productivity losses or increased diseases, then they start seeing the possibility of moving toward a more sustainable production.

Tom:                          Can you expand on the practical measures a pig operation could implement to develop a healthy production system?

Catharina:                 I would recommend any pig producer that wants to develop a healthy production system seek out a team of experts: consultants, nutritionists and veterinarians who can evaluate the whole system. That is what we call a “whole herd audit.” This audit usually takes at least a day. Based upon this initial audit, there will be various points to address, whether in housing, management, nutrition or disease treatment. You start setting up the concrete plan of what major issues to address and what targets to achieve.

                                  Everyone involved in production, as well as nutritionists and veterinarians, needs to be involved in an antimicrobial reduction plan. Once you’ve set up this plan and you start implementing, it's really important that you have a very good follow-up. Therefore, you should have regular audits to monitor the progress, create accountability for effort and set up new achievable targets as necessary. Alltech has actually developed such a holistic antimicrobial reduction audit.

Tom:                          What is the future of antibiotic use in the pig industry?

Catharina:                 I hope that the pig industry will move toward reducing antibiotics very quickly so that the consumers are not forcing them to completely ban all antibiotics. The future of antibiotic use, as I see it, is that antibiotics will be available for individual treatment of sick pigs or serve a metaphylactic use in the exceptional cases. But all prophylaxis or regular continual use such as growth promotion is stopped.

Tom:                          In the past couple of years, we've seen some significant increases in the presence of mycotoxins in haylage, barlage and silage. Why are mycotoxins important to consider when we're talking about antibiotic reduction?

Catharina:                 Mycotoxins are produced in various unfavorable conditions. As you mentioned, we see them more and more emergent in all our feed sources. They’re very toxic compounds, and they can impact both immunity and health. There are various types of mycotoxins present in most feeds in various levels. We have seen in audits of many pig producers that an underlying reason for poor health and productivity is a high level of mycotoxin exposure.

Tom:                          What kind of effects do mycotoxins have on pigs?

Catharina:                 That is one of the problems — that people don't realize that they have a mycotoxin challenge in their production because the signs are very subtle and diffused. There are various symptoms that the producer does not recognize. Some of these symptoms are, for example, poor feed efficiency, suboptimal growth, digestive distress, various disease problems and poor reproductive performance. Mycotoxins have strong immune suppressors, and that’s one of the reasons why we see more and more disease and why the pigs are susceptible to disease.

                                 All of these mycotoxins — there are many — have different modes of action. But there’s seldom just one mycotoxin present in the feed. There’s usually multiple. When they’re working together, sometimes they can have an additive effect, but sometimes they will have a multiplicative effect. The gut and immune system are first to encounter the mycotoxins once ingested. We have talked about the importance of gut health and antimicrobial reduction audits and programs. It’s essential to address this risk as an aspect of the reduction program. We have always seen in our antimicrobial reduction audits that when we go in and address these mycotoxin challenges and feed through the inclusion of a good broad-spectrum mycotoxin binder such as Mycosorb®, then we see improved productivity.

Tom:                          What consumer demands are driving significant changes in the industry?

Catharina:                 Consumers have high demands on the industry. Today’s consumers want food from animals from a sustainable, animal-friendly system. They also want food from animals that have not been medicated with antibiotics. We have seen that consumers are actually willing to pay a higher price for meat produced without antibiotics.

                                  Animal welfare is another area that has a very high importance for consumers. Measures such as tail docking and castration are increasingly questioned. Since these interventions are often coupled with an antibiotic injection, systems where castration and tail docking are not necessary will have reduced antimicrobial use. Tail docking has been performed to reduce the incidence of tail biting in group-housed pigs. If the animal environment is improved, it is possible to rear pigs with their tails intact. That is the case in Sweden, where tail docking is banned.

                                  An improved group housing system will reduce antimicrobial use in growing pigs. Another area is the group housing for gestating sows, so they don’t stand locked up in small crates all their life. This is also highly desirable by consumers. This also optimizes the health and strength of these sows, and they can rear healthier piglets. The animal welfare requests of consumers contribute to healthy animals that do not need antibiotics. 

Tom:                          Dr. Cat Berge of Berge Veterinary Consulting BVBA in Vosselaar, Belgium. Thank you so much for joining us.

Have a question or comment?

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Eddie Daly, business development manager at InTouch. Click the link above to hear the full audio. 

Eddie Daly is the business development manager at InTouch, a live nutritional support service developed by KEENAN to provide real-time feedback on diet performance. He joins us from Dunboyne, Ireland.

Tom:                          First, what is InTouch, and what’s your role with InTouch?

Eddie:                         InTouch, in its simplest form, is a live feedback and support system for predominantly ruminant farmers — dairy farmers or beef farmers. My role as business development manager is growing the business, growing InTouch’s presence in the different regions, especially those new regions that we're going into now with Alltech as our mother company. It’s bringing new technologies to the market and tailoring InTouch’s offering for each region.

Tom:                          When InTouch first tapped into the internet in 2011, which seems like light-years ago, there wasn't much connectivity. There were maybe 12 million connected devices. How does that look now?

Eddie:                         It's changed drastically in the last seven years. Conservative estimates say there are 10 billion connected devices at the moment — some people say there are about 20 billion — so, it's huge. The number of smart devices in our everyday lives has grown astronomically. I think the goal in all of this hasn't changed. It's all about making those devices speak with each other and delivering a coherent message to the end user at the end of the day.

Tom:                          InTouch offers its farm clients real-time performance monitoring and instant feedback. What does that mean?

Eddie:                         I suppose it means, in its simplest form, that we record what is happening on a daily basis on each farm. So, farmers and nutritionists will talk about the prescribed diets of the day that they formulate and try and execute. So, what we're recording is what they actually put into that mixer wagon. So, we’re importing data back from the mixer wagon and we’re combining that with production data to give them different key performance indicators.

Tom:                          And is that information, that data, is it being obtained through sensors that are strategically placed?

Eddie:                         Yes. We’re importing data from the sensors from the mixer wagon and we're also importing different kinds of service sensors. That can be anything from chain tension, so different things that are important to the farmer for both his performance and also for his machine operability.

Tom:                          Farmers are busy people, and yet here is all this incoming data, streams of it. How do you help them interpret and harness it to their advantage?

Eddie:                         You're exactly right. You know, we’re being inundated with data from different sources. It can be very difficult for one farmer or one customer to sit down and make sense of it all. One of the most important elements of InTouch is having a human at the other end of the phone or other end of the computer. We have a trained team of InTouch nutritionists, who will interpret the data that has already been crunched. So, the data has already been interpreted by our algorithms in the InTouch system. That person at the other end of the phone will relay the information to the farmers. So, we’re always trying to make it very manageable for the farmer to make one small decision that might make an improvement on his overall operations.

Tom:                          Is a benefit of this process a reduction, or even elimination, of paperwork?

Eddie:                         Absolutely. That's the goal. We customize our approach depending on how that customer likes to be contacted. We now contact them through the phone — which can be a very brief phone call that lasts 10 seconds, or it can be a long phone call that lasts 20 minutes — or by email. And we're going mobile. We have an InTouch app from which the farmer can receive information and also send information to his mixer wagon. We're always trying to tailor our approach to exactly what the farmer needs and how he best likes to connect with us.

Tom:                          What are some ways that InTouch can turn around this data and help the farmer optimize efficiencies and accuracy in feed mixing?

Eddie:                         Our goal at InTouch is to simplify the process so that we can say that, whether you are operating the mixer wagon yourself or whether you have three different operators, with InTouch you can be guaranteed that it's being operated consistently on any given day.

                                    We’re trying to simplify the process of loading the mixer wagon. Then, at the other end, when we have the performance information, we're trying to give farmers useful management clues as to what he should be doing. We can take different producers from a particular region — take the U.K., for instance — and we can benchmark each producer against other producers in his region. He can see in a snapshot where he lies in that league table, how he is performing, and then that will give him clues as to what he should be doing or what he can do to improve.

Tom:                          We touched on the elimination of paperwork, but what other sorts of conveniences does InTouch bring to the farm?

Tom:                           Now that we’ve gone cloud-based — that was in 2011, as you mentioned — all the farmers’ information is stored securely in the cloud. That means they can access their data from anywhere, at any time. So, they can log on to their own unique producer portal through any device and access their information straight away. With the mobile app, everything is a lot simpler; you can make changes on the go. I was recently speaking to a beef producer who was importing a lot of animals on a daily basis. He was going to different sources, and from his mobile, he could update his rations based on his changing inventory of animals. So, that made his life a lot easier, and he could then spend his time better, as a result.

Tom:                          How does InTouch differ? What sets it apart from other feed management technologies and tools?

Eddie:                         I suppose it’s the alert system. We flag any discrepancies in performance in or around 10 percent. So, if we see inaccuracies of 10 percent, or reduction in performance by 10 percent — or increases in performance by 10 percent — we raise an alert.

                                    The next thing that makes InTouch different from other management tools is that there's a person who is interpreting the data and taking it to the next level. These are trained nutritionists. They can advise on a new formulation of the diet as a result or they can just simply walk through with the farmer the different management things he's doing and make suggestions. In the end, the farmer gets a very condensed bit of information. He's not having to deal with reams of data; he’s able to get to the root of the problem much more quickly.

Tom:                          And can you interface with other software programs and services?

Eddie:                         Absolutely. At the moment, we’re integrating the different herd management tools such as DairyComp and milking equipment such as DelPro. We're speaking with those feed management and herd management tools. From day one, we've always been a very open platform. We'll share our information or our portals with other platforms so we can give the farmer a better value at the end of the day.

Tom:                          There is a lot of interest these days in food chain traceability. How does InTouch facilitate that?

Eddie:                         We're working with a few retailers that are concerned about traceability. They want to guarantee that their end product is from a credible source. So, we're working with them by collecting and recording the feed data so they can then say, “This animal has been fed this diet over a certain amount of days and achieved this performance.” So, they can put a stamp on it and say, “We can verify this beef or this milk” or “This is a truly sustainable product because we know where it’s coming from — we know what it’s been fed and we know the cost of it to the environment.”

Tom:                          Any emerging technologies that you're keeping your eye on for their potential to improve efficiencies and quality for your clientele farms?

Eddie:                         Yes. There are so many smart devices coming on board now. In agriculture, it's definitely a very hot area. We’re certainly looking at incorporating things like cameras. There’s a lot of very smart technology out there monitoring cow behavior through cameras, monitoring feed behavior as well.  I suppose one of the most well-known ones out there is NIR, or “near infrared technology,” which is able to get a snapshot of the quality and the nutritional value of some ingredients. So, we’re very open to building those kind of things into the system and tailoring our approach.

                                    With Alltech coming on board and acquiring InTouch, we definitely see synergies between the two companies. We've always been about precision feeding, and with Alltech, we’re seeing potential to get to precision nutrition. Alltech has a lot of very nice solutions based on minerals and additives that can add to the performance of different producers. If we can pinpoint an area that a producer is lacking in or needs help with, we could see a lot of synergies with Alltech and fitting in different solutions.

Tom:                          Does InTouch employ blockchain technology?

Eddie:                         We're not there yet, but we have the potential to plug into one of those kinds of systems very nicely. I suppose it comes back to that conversation about retailers and an integrated system. Blockchain has very exciting possibilities for farmers. They can use blockchain to add to the value of their product at the end of the day. We're definitely interested in that arena, and we’re in talks with different partners.

Tom:                          With all this data pouring into InTouch from thousands of farm clients, do trends emerge? What are you seeing?

Eddie:                         Yes. We can break it down by markets — by country or by regions within the country. Anecdotally, you could say there is definitely a tendency for the larger farms to have the ability to make savings and become more efficient just purely through scale. But, I think one thing that we’ve seen across the last decade is that good management is key to any profitable business. Those farmers who are clued into their data and are aware of their bottom line are the farmers who are going to grow and be more profitable as a result. So, it’s very much down to the individual farmer. I wouldn’t say there's any formula to a successful agricultural enterprise, but a very clued-in, good manager goes a long way to being a successful business.

Tom:                          So, Eddie, based on the information that InTouch is gathering, do you have any advice for producers?

Eddie:                         That’s a tough one. I suppose I would always recommend casting a critical eye over your business, not to have to accept criticism or anything like that, but to definitely embrace new technologies. Farmers are the original inventors. They have come up with the best innovations in agriculture themselves. So, I'm sure there are listeners to your podcast who have thoughts on innovations that they just want to get out there. And I would just encourage them to do so because I think agriculture and ag-tech are in a golden age.

Tom:                          Thank you for joining us, Eddie.

Eddie:                         Thanks, Tom. Good to talk to you.

Below is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech. Click below to hear the full audio:

Tom:                            You've written that technological innovations have the ability to transform every link in the food chain, “from seed to fork.” Give us your shortlist of emerging, potentially transformative agricultural technologies.

Aidan:                          I think anybody who lives on the planet is very aware of the transformation that is taking place in all aspects of every business. Agriculture is no different. I tried to summarize this once, because I think we’re flailing around trying to figure out what we can do with gene editing, with digital technologies, autonomous vehicles, and which ones are going to truly transform agriculture. I saw a paper written by PricewaterhouseCoopers in which they talked about eight digital technologies that will transform the world, and I applied that to agriculture.

                                      Effectively, the technologies split into two different types: hardware and software. From a hardware perspective, we are thinking about things like sensors, robots and 3D printing — things that collect data that we can analyze — the internet of things.

                                    From a software perspective, we're thinking of artificial intelligence: virtual reality, enhanced or augmented reality, the ability to analyze data and machine vision. In essence, we're talking about the collection of information and putting that information in a form that people can see, act on and make management decisions.

Tom:                            These technologies are quite revolutionary. How has the pace of the development of these technologies — digital, in particular — changed farming from what it used to be?

Aidan:                          I have to say it hasn't changed farming too much, so far. I would say robotics is probably the technology that has been most embraced so far. When you go to a dairy farm, you will see robots being commonly used. Robots are not yet used in swine farming or in poultry, though that’s going to be coming quite soon.

                                    I think that we've already seen the use of blockchain, which is an electronic ledger that allows you to trace food as it goes through the system. That has been embraced to some degree, in food, for example, with turkeys, grains and soybeans. I would say, frankly, agriculture is a little late to the game. Nonetheless, the opportunities, in terms of how this can transform the business, are probably greater in agriculture than they are in other industries.

Tom:                            What aspects of farming could undergo the greatest transformation from these technologies that you're talking about?

Aidan:                          If we think about what we do today on the farm, be it in the field or with animals, we see a huge gap between the genetic capacity of the animal and what we actually achieve. This is most easily seen if somebody decides to set up a research center. In that research center, they will see yields in corn or in soybeans — or, in terms of animal performance, in milk, meat or eggs — that perform 10 percent better than on the farm or in the field. So, that tells you there’s a lot of potential.

                                       We normally estimate that the genetic potential of an animal or of a plant is about 30 percent above what we actually get. Of course, a lot of this relates to weather, management, the use of pesticides, fertilizers — what we do in general to get the most out of those plants or animals. So, there is a very large gap that data could plug, particularly if we knew what was happening in real time.

                                    I think that, from that perspective, agriculture has lots of areas that could improve. Milk would be a classic example of that, but I think I could take any aspect of agriculture and expect it to be improved through the use of technologies.

Tom:                            If you were asked to compose a short list of the most important tech advances in agriculture of late, what would that look like?

Aidan:                          I think robotics is the one that has been embraced the fastest and where we’ve seen the greatest improvements in the shortest space of time.

                                    Sensors would be number two — in particular for dairy cows, but other species are starting to use sensors to detect, in real time, how much an animal is eating or drinking, how much weight gain is occurring and if it’s sick.

                                    We are seeing the use of drones to collect that same information with plants growing in the field. And, of course, we're seeing it in terms of what's being done with higher-value crops, where the sensors are directly in the soil or on the plant.

                                    The ones that excite me — blockchain has tremendous potential to be used in the near future. I think augmented reality — where you could walk into a field or into a barn wearing goggles that would provide you with information that would allow you to manage those animals or those crops — is very important. And although I don't think virtual reality is going to be something we see being used in agriculture in the near future, we already see it being used in the food industry. McDonald's is already using it to allow consumers to see where food is being produced on farms and to, in effect, “visit” those farms virtually to see what's happening.

Tom:                            To what extent are artificial intelligence and robotics playing roles in farming?

Aidan:                          Robotics is something that I believe has immediate relevance. We are finding it more and more difficult to get people to work on farms. That's especially relevant in the Western world — Western Europe and the United States, obviously, with lots of discussion about labor. But, surprisingly, robotics is increasingly an issue in places like Brazilian processing plants. People don’t necessarily want to work on pig farms anywhere in the world. I think even in China we will see the increasing use of robotics on the farm. Artificial intelligence can transform every aspect of the business of farming. So, even things like veterinarian interventions, nutritional advice or nutritional changes, anything where human intelligence is involved and where decisions are being made, I can see that artificial intelligence can allow us to replace some loss of that role by allowing real-time decisions to be made based on real-time information.

Tom:                            Disruptive innovation creates new markets and reshapes existing markets. What new markets are on the horizon, and how are existing markets being reshaped by these developments?

Aidan:                          A lot of the time, it seems with these digital technologies, what we’re doing is collecting information that allows us to do the current job better. I think that plays a very large part in what we're seeing at the moment: greater traceability, greater information to the consumer and greater information for management decisions.

                                    I wouldn't discard the ability of technology to open markets that haven't been there before. The most obvious one will be the ability to produce food at a lower cost on existing farms, which obviously would allow that food to be given to more of the 7 billion mouths that we have to feed. There is opportunity to create food in new ways. For example, hydroponics requires the use of sensors. The ability of cameras to make decisions in real time about how to irrigate could be very important. Also, because consumer transparency is very important, consumers can see the food being grown, what interventions are taking place and maybe a little bit more information on what's actually happening on either the farm in the countryside or the farm in the city.

Tom:                            With the emergence and the arrival of all these new technologies, each demanding a lot of investment of time and money to acquire and to implement, do you have some advice for producers about how to manage all that?

Aidan:                          I think in the general history of agriculture, there’s been a conflict between the sales and marketing function and the purchaser that is the farmer. I'm sure that 8,000 years ago, when the first sales person arrived on the farm trying to convince a farmer to use his seeds, which he had harvested and held, the farmer was probably wondering what the price was going to be, what were the conditions, what do they need to barter in return. The reality is, with this new level of technology, we're typically talking about startups, and startups, by their nature, are small companies. Many of the startups don't have a history or background in agriculture. So, they don't often fully understand the benefits of the technology that they're promoting. Sometimes they promote too many benefits instead of focusing on the ones that are really relevant to farmers. I'd say to farmers and to companies — anybody engaging with startups in the agricultural space — try to be as friendly as you can and try to be understanding of the person on the other side of the desk or the other side of the tractor who's trying to explain to you why this technology might help you.

                                    Try to see if you can help that person actually be successful. Transformers of digital technologies are essential to the future of producing food efficiently, effectively and safely, and therefore to the future of the planet. Startups will be a part of bringing those technologies to us. If they are successful, we will be successful. So, our goal has to be to make it possible for them to succeed.

Tom:                            You mentioned blockchain technology, and I'm wondering about what seems to be a conflict: how a supply chain ledger system can be at once transparent and secure.

Aidan:                          Many listeners may not be familiar with the term “blockchain.” If they aren’t, I would suggest they read up on it. There are a lot of great videos on the internet. The way I've explained it to myself is that it’s similar to bitcoin. It's something that’s virtual — in this case, a virtual invoice — that passes from person to person, and yet that person cannot see who held that invoice at various stages of the process.

                                    Maybe there is a farmer producing eggs, and those eggs are cracked and we produce a liquid egg from it, and that liquid egg might be further fractionated and used in a variety of food products, with many people involved in the process. Sometimes, not everybody wants everyone in the chain to know where they purchased their raw material, and maybe even where their supplier bought their raw material. So, in that system, a virtual invoice is really exciting because it allows you to gain that traceability without giving up the secrecy. Like bitcoin, it can move from person to person and still retain its value; that's what blockchain allows us to do. That’s the excitement in agriculture and in the food chain in general – a technology that allows us to do this.

                                      Walmart has made a big noise about the fact that they've embraced this originally in China. They're now starting to use it here in the United States. We see discussions amongst many of the other major food companies about the same thing, about what they can do.

                                      I see blockchain as being capable of transforming every aspect of where food moves from one supplier to another.

Tom:                            Do you see blockchain technology combating fraud in food labeling?

Aidan:                          It certainly has the potential to do so. It is not possible for somebody to manipulate. So, yes, it checks that box. It allows us to gain transparency without losing secrecy. Secrecy, right or wrong, has been a big part of the way food has been produced in the past. People have not wanted everybody to know what they have done in their manufacturing process. I think it will be mandated, if not by governments, then I could see it being mandated by food companies. The constant concern is, “If I have a food recall, where did that problem come from, and how easily and quickly can I trace it back?”

Tom:                            Among the technologies that we've talked about, and maybe some that we have not touched on, do you see any that have the potential of mitigating world population growth?

Aidan:                          Well, if by mitigating world population growth you mean providing enough food for all the people who are going to be on the planet…

Tom:                            That’s what I mean.

Aidan:                          I definitely think that, if we look at that 30 percent gap, you could transform that into a 30 percent increase in food production. However, we know that there are areas where we could make even greater gains. Food waste is an obvious one. We say that we lose 30 percent of our food between the plate and our mouth in the West. They say that 30 percent of the food is wasted between the farm and the plate in the developing world. Clearly, there are tremendous gains that could be made to reduce the loss of food in the food chain as it exists at the moment, and I've already mentioned genetic potential. The ability to apply resources — in particular, scarce resources like water and land — more efficiently will also become a very large part of what we see in the future with digital technologies.

Tom:                            You’re watching these technologies emerge. What would you say is the most amazing thing that you've seen lately?

Aidan:                          Maybe I'm a little bit like a kid in a candy shop — I'm amazed by everything that's coming. I have seen many technologies that I truly believe are transformational. One that really excites me is that they've created an egg that you can put under lights and, from that light, you can tell whether the egg is male or female. In the layer industry, we hatch 18 billion eggs because we need 9 million females to grow up to be laying hens and to produce the eggs. That means that 9 million eggs are laid and hatched to become males that do not get used as laying hens. In the past, those were euthanized. However, that's increasingly unacceptable to consumers. In the case of the broiler industry, we know males grow differently than females. If we could shine a light to know which eggs are males and which were females, we could hatch them in different trays. We could put them into different houses. We could feed them differently, grow them for different periods of time, etcetera. So, that’s transformational in terms of what we could see from a world perspective.

Tom:                            Aidan Connolly is chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech. Thank you very much, Aidan.

Aidan:                          Thank you, Tom.

Below is a transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Dr. Karl Dawson, vice president and chief scientific officer at Alltech and co-director of the Alltech Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition.

Click below to hear the full interview:

                                    Over the last 10 years, scientists at Alltech have been using nutrigenomics to define a variety of new nutritional concepts, manage product development and redefine our view of nutrition. What are the practical applications of the science, and what does it mean for the future of feeding and farming? Tom Martin talked with Dr. Karl Dawson, vice president and chief scientific officer at Alltech.

Tom:                          Let’s begin with the question: What is nutrigenomics?

Karl:                            Nutrigenomics is a system for looking to see how the environment, disease processes and nutrition influence gene expression in an animal. This is taking the basic information that comes in an animal’s genetic makeup, its DNA, and looking to see how that's used. This system allows us to look at numerous genes at a time. And in some of our studies, we would be looking at as many as 25,000 genes at a time. So, we get very precise in our measures of what the environment, or disease — or, in this case, nutrition — does to that animal.

Tom:                          In a recent panel discussion, the webinar “Farming the Future,” you said that nutrigenomics is really going to redefine things, if it hasn't already. Can you elaborate on that?

Karl:                            Yes. We’re going to be looking at nutritional processes in a totally different way. We could also look at things like diseases in a different way. The way we look at nutrition today is based on a narrow group of responses in an animal to a nutritional strategy. Nutrigenomics allows us to do that same kind of thing while looking at many, many different characteristics at once and very rapidly. We can look at changes induced by nutrition within several days instead of waiting for a whole production cycle, which may take anywhere from 42 days to two years.

Tom:                          The name of the field, nutrigenomics, might lead us to believe that it’s limited to exploring how nutrition influences the expression of individual genes, but is it more than that? Does the science also look at disease and environmental factors and how they’re related to nutrition?

Karl:                            Yes. We can look at all of those things and how they're related. “Nutrigenomics” may be a misnomer. In the science world, we call it “transcriptomics,” the idea of looking at these genes and how they're transcribed. But the word “nutrigenomics” has taken off, and it’s really being used to describe just about anything to do with gene expression and factors that influence gene expression.

Tom:                          How is this tool being used to define new feeding strategies?

Karl:                            We can talk about a couple of examples that have developed over the last seven or eight years. One of those is the feeding of young animals. We could take a chick during the first 96 hours after hatching and change its nutrition — by limiting its nutrients, we can change how that animal performs throughout its life or its nutrient requirements throughout its life. We would not have been able to know what that looked like until we had this nutrigenomics tool.

                                 We can show that the gene expression pattern changes in a young bird when you've limited its nutrients, but those changes that take place in that gene are reflected throughout the life of that bird. So, some 24 days later, that bird has a totally different environment that it is working with, and the types of nutrients it requires have changed. It's a totally different animal when it comes to its nutritional requirements.

Tom:                          And does this bring more consistency, more precision to farming?

Karl:                            Yes. It’s going to bring a lot of precision, but it actually gives you a new tool because, in some of those changes we’re seeing, we can decrease the amount of nutrients that animal is requiring. You condition it to a low nutrient value or nutrien. As it grows, it’s expecting that as it goes on through its life. So, for example, its mineral requirement may be decreased by as much as 50 percent. That’s a totally different world for that animal to grow in, and it changes the way we feed that animal to optimize its performance and health.

Tom:                          Let's say there's been a blood draw or a tissue sample taken from the herd or the flock on the farm and brought to the lab to process. How long does it take to get that information back to the farm?

Karl:                            It only takes about 48 hours for us to process a sample, but I don't want to mislead you here. We would not necessarily use this as a diagnostic tool at this point. Today, it's a research tool to show you what changes happen with a new trend. We can use it to screen new nutritional strategies or look at nutrients in the way they're influencing that animal. Eventually, you’re going to see some diagnostic tools coming from that. But today, that probably isn't a very realistic approach for this type of technology.

Tom:                          What are some new commercially useful feeding concepts that have come directly from the use of this molecular tool?

Karl:                            A couple come to mind immediately. One of them has been a rather surprising observation. Often, in the growth of that young animal and growing livestock, we’ll use enzyme supplements. The idea behind using an enzyme supplement is really to change what is happening to the food, how it's digested. Well, one of the surprising things that we found using nutrigenomics is, that is reflected not only in the digestion process, but actually the way the tissue develops in that animal. It changes the receptors for hormones. It changes the way that animal responds physiologically.

                                  That technology has moved forward and is the basis of a couple of different programs that we’re using in beef cattle today — to use enzymes to enhance their growth and performance. In some systems, we found that this can be worth as much as $15 to $20 per head when that animal reaches its final stages of growth or finishes out and goes on for beef production. So, it's a pretty substantial thing. We never would have seen that, or even thought about doing that, if it hadn't been for that nutrigenomic tool that allows us to see those changes in those animals.

Tom:                          I also recall from the webinar, “Farming the Future,” some discussion about the influence of minerals.

Karl:                            Absolutely. Minerals are very important, and that's one of the areas that probably was the hallmark of our nutrigenomics work when we started out. One mineral, specifically, is selenium. Selenium is a nutrient that's very important, but we had no idea of how much or what the ramifications of feeding selenium really were. We found all sorts of hidden traits that are influenced by selenium, all the way from reproduction to the development of brain tissue and the speed at which an animal grows.

                                    One of the most interesting traits is the way that animal generates energy. We found very early on that we could change the function of the mitochondria and the cell. This is the energy-producing organ within that cell. We can increase its efficiency by about 15 to 20 percent. That doesn't sound like a big number, but using a dairy cow for example, that means we can improve its energy efficiency by that same amount, which probably means 2 to 3 liters of milk a day from a cow.

                                 So, this is turning everything upside down. We've changed what we thought we knew about energy metabolism, and it's a totally different world now. We're going to have to go back now and redefine energy metabolism — not based on the energy content of the feed, but based on these minerals and the way they are interacting with that energy source.

Tom:                          Let's say there's a new feed supplement out there on the market and you want to determine its value as quickly as you possibly can. Can nutrigenomics do that?

Karl:                            Absolutely. That’s one of the most exciting examples I have right now. Several years ago, we were asked to come up with an alternative antioxidant to help us address the shortage of vitamin E. We took a nutrigenomics approach to that issue and developed what we thought was a new material to serve as a booster for vitamin E activity. Normally, to evaluate a new antioxidant system like that, we would have done it over a period of several years. It takes time to grow the animals, look to see what the vitamin E is doing, to harvest the meat product and evaluate the way that is responding to oxidative stress.

                                    With a nutrigenomics approach, we were able to do the same types of evaluation, but we can look at gene expression as our measure. In doing so, we could shorten that two-year period to about six weeks. We could actually evaluate what that new ingredient was doing during that very short time.

Tom:                          By applying this tool, you're gaining a lot of information, a lot of knowledge. How does that information influence the way you think about nutrient requirements?

Karl:                            We’ve changed a lot in terms of nutrient requirements. We talked about selenium a minute ago. We used to have a fairly standard idea of what selenium requirements were. Using nutrigenomics, we’ve been able to redefine that, and found that by changing the form of selenium — by putting it in the form of a selenium yeast, for example — we could decrease its requirements by about 50 percent.

                                    We’ve gone on to look at all sorts of different minerals. We know that we can cut back on a lot of the requirements we expect for copper and zinc in the diet. We can cut those by as much as 75 percent. So, we have really started to change that. Instead of asking what a mineral is doing, we look at the form of that mineral as well as how much we're providing it. Again, it’s turning things upside down. The old requirements we had for some of these minerals have really changed.

Tom:                          How is nutrigenomics being used to demonstrate the effects of maternal nutrition on the growth or development and the disease resistance of offspring?

Karl:                            This has been another very exciting area. We did some studies several years ago in pigs — looking to see what would happen to the offspring if we fed a particular carbohydrate or supplement to the sow. We fed the sows a particular carbohydrate called Actigen^®, which is a yeast product. Then, we looked to see what was happening in the piglets. To our surprise, by looking at the gene expression in those piglets, we could easily differentiate the piglets that came from the sow that was fed that material. In fact, we found some very specific genes were being changed. One of the more interesting effects was to the hormones that influenced the ability of that young pig to eat.

                                 We could stimulate intake in those young pigs, not by feeding the young pigs the material, but by feeding the sow. That changes what we think in terms of overall production, because now we have a different animal to work with. They have different gene expression patterns and, in fact, different nutrient requirements. Their resistance to specific diseases has changed.

Tom:                          Does this enhance that consistency that we were talking about earlier across generations?

Karl:                            Yes. That's the idea. We've always thought that consistency occurs, and we have evidence of it in the human population — that you are what your mother eats. Nutrigenomics actually gives us the tools to see what is changing specifically, and to program that into the production process.

Tom:                          We've been talking about animals here as though they were something separate and apart from us, but we're animals as well. Does nutrigenomics influence the way that we think about human nutrition?

Karl:                            Absolutely. We’ve really projected into the human population from what we've done in animals with nutrigenomics. One of the star programs that we have right now is a set of compounds that we've developed to provide a preventative for Alzheimer's disease. This program came directly from our observations of what was happening to gene expression. We realized that the genes that were being expressed — or not being expressed — in Alzheimer’s patients were, in fact, associated with Alzheimer’s and the development of neurological tissue. We were able to track that relationship down, and it’s in clinical studies today.

                                 We've done similar things with some of the yeast products that we’re using. We know that they influence animals. We are now doing the same types of nutrigenomic studies in humans to evaluate how these might be useful to address health issues.

Tom:                          I know from past conversations with you about the science of nutrigenomics that you feel that it holds a lot of promise. What is your take home message about this science?

Karl:                            That this is an extremely powerful tool. It probably gives us more information and more precision for feeding animals — and probably even humans — in the future. It’s going to be a very powerful tool for changing the way we develop our feeding strategies. So, my take home message is, “This thing is going to be something that will influence the way science changes our nutrition.”

Below is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Dr. Steven Borst, general manager of Alltech Crop Science. Click below to hear the full interview:

Tom:                            There are many interesting innovations, trends and developments happening in the world of crop science. And joining us for an update is Dr. Steven Borst, general manager of Alltech Crop Science. Thanks for joining us, Steven.

Steven:                        Thank you very much for having me.

Tom:                            Let’s begin with something everybody likes to talk about: the weather. Weather-wise, 2017 was devastating for a lot of the world. Are we going to continue to see a lingering impact on crop producers in 2018?

Steven:                        If we look at it from a global perspective, I would say we’d have to pick out a couple areas, or a couple climates, particularly. Yes, we saw major shifts and some major extremes with regard to tropical storms, tropical depressions and places experiencing drought. I believe I saw in the news the other day that  Cape Town, South Africa is going to run out of water — it’s the first major city to run out of water — this upcoming March. So, seeing those majorly impacted areas, absolutely that will resonate into other cropping systems.

                                    I think there's also a positive outlook, too, with regard to what we've seen in other areas. For example, particularly here in Kentucky, we had a very good cropping weather cycle pattern. We've seen some very good harvest yields with regard to specific crops in specific areas. In those impacted areas, particularly if we're talking about California, or if we’re talking about Florida, yes, there will be some carryover.

                                    Picking Florida just in general, we're going to see the impact from the hurricane (Irma) there. We’re going to see its impact, and we're going to see it, quite possibly, all the way through the supply chain with regard to orange juice and what that cost is going be to the consumer because of the impact that that hurricane had on citrus yields. So, I'd say, Tom, from our perspective, depending upon where specifically we would be looking, we’d be treating those impacted areas a little bit differently. But, nobody is more prepared than a farmer for what's going to occur. They're going to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

                                    I would say for 2018, that's exactly how we have to handle it. You have to handle each year that way. So, carryover effects versus what we produced last year, but the hope for this year is that it's going to be the year that we have a perfect weather pattern. It’s tough to predict the weather, as we all know, but there is going to be carryover in particular regions and areas that we've worked in, but we’re very hopeful for 2018. Very hopeful.

Tom:                            Let's go back and focus on Florida for a moment. I think we're referring to Hurricane Irma.

Steven:                        Yes. Hurricane Irma.

Tom:                            It rolled right up the peninsula, and it hit at a time when Florida citrus was already undergoing a disaster: “greening,” I think it's called. And you're engaged in some way with mitigating that issue. Can you talk about that a bit?

Steven:                        Sure. We’ll explain it in two parts: Citrus greening is caused by the Asian citrus psyllid. Liberibacter is the bacteria that is injected through the vector of the psyllid — the psyllid itself is a vector — and it has been impacting Florida citrus since it was first identified in 2004 or 2005. That disease has yet to have a specific cure identified for it.  I wait to see it on the nightly news quite often, but it's just kind of one of those issues you don’t hear about often, but that we probably should, since a lot of us eat and drink citrus or orange juice.

                                    From an Alltech perspective, we are focused on the growers down there. One of the longest-standing areas that we have worked in from a crop science perspective has been the state of Florida. We have been providing them with our solutions to increase their yields, increase productivity and increase quality. We’ve been witness to what those declines have been, particularly with regard to the yields that we see there. One of our Florida salesmen happens to be a citrus grower himself. So, it hits home — particularly when we see our longstanding customers impacted.

                                    With regard to the greening problem, we're continuing as a collective group, whether it’s a government agency or private companies such as ours, to try to come up with a solution for these farmers and for these citrus growers. To date, we don't have the “silver bullet” to combat this disease.

                                    The Liberibacter bacteria is currently unculturable. So, therefore, we can't work on areas to try to essentially get rid of it or mitigate it. Mitigation through proper nutrition and technology, such as what we're offering, is one of the areas that we're focused on. That ties into some of our research — the nutrigenomic research — that we conduct at Alltech. We’re looking at applying our technologies and solutions to the crop and seeing how that impacts the plant metabolically. We have seen some very favorable results by looking at it as a way to help the plant defend itself.

                                    So, that's been an area that's been a big focus for us from a research perspective. I was down in Florida last week with one of our close customers at their grower meetings and going through our research, sharing exactly what we're trying to do in trying to come up with a solution there. So, Tom, it’s a big area of focus for us, and that stems from (Alltech founder and president) Dr. Lyons essentially challenging us to come up with a solution. Regardless of what that challenge is, he's always trying to come up with a solution or a “recipe” for us to provide to our customers. So, it’s been a challenge. Our efforts are still ongoing. We’ve seen some very positive results with our technologies.

                                    Back to your question on Irma: What has happened is that we have a serious disease, and that has really impacted the citrus industry. I had heard last week that, actually, prior to Irma, citrus production was actually going to be above what it was the previous year. That would have been the first time since the identification of citrus greening. Then they were impacted by a hurricane —  Hurricane Irma — and they've lost product, in some areas, more than 50–75 percent of their crops.

                                    So, that's one of those areas where we were talking about seeing a residual impact. It's going to be detrimental. There’s a lot of work going into it from the government aspect, too, on proposals being offered and put together to combat things from a financial loss perspective. So, that’s an area that we're really monitoring. We’re really hoping that 2018 is the turnaround for us and that we can come up with something even more effective so that our producers can get through this tough time.

Tom:                            Even taking into account the challenges that the weather brought on last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that farmers have harvested record crops, including soybeans, peanuts, canola, rapeseed and hops. As a global leader in crop technologies, what other causes for optimism are you seeing in the U.S. and around the world, for that matter?

Steven:                        Absolutely. I would say it's, again, those extremes in specific areas that will impact us. Overall, though, it was a very good year with regard to cropping systems. From our standpoint, from a technology standpoint, it's very exciting for us to see that, because a lot of the technologies and a lot of the groups that we work with and the advancement in technology — and that's not just to say technologies from crop inputs, but whether it’s computer systems or digital mapping — those advancements are really providing the farmer the opportunity to make very calculated decisions.

                                    Farmers are probably the world's greatest scientists, and they're always continuing to identify areas for improvement — if they can get one more bushel, get one more orange, increase production just one-tenth or one one-hundredth of a percent over the previous year’s production. So, technologies, and advancements in technologies, have really permitted those farmers to “play around” a lot more and to come up with solutions specifically tailored to individual challenges. 

                                    If we go back to citrus greening,  “Okay, how can I, even with this disease, increase the opportunity for us to increase quality or yield?” So, they're continuing to pick and play with programs, with technology, and to work with different companies and organizations in order to do that.

                                    It’s exciting because, when you see that openness to try new things, it permits us the opportunity to provide new things. And if we can provide new tools, and the farmer has more willingness to try those new technologies or be open to those new tools, we’re better able to assist them with those challenges.

                                    The larger and greater the crop from the previous year, the better. There's no complacency with regard to farming. It's always “How do I increase? How do I get better? Just because we have a record year this year doesn't mean that we're not going to try even harder next year.” It’s very exciting for us.

Tom:                            Many parts of the world are enjoying an era of economic growth at the moment. Would you say the biological crop industry is benefiting?

Steven:                        Yes. There is a benefit to the biological arena. I attended the first World Biostimulant Congress in Paris, France, when I first joined Alltech. It must have been almost six years ago. We just had the third congress this past year here in the United States. They’ve seen, quite possibly, one-, two-, three-, fourfold attendance and companies and other groups engaged in this arena. There is no question, from an agriculture perspective, that this new market is the forefront of where we're going to be in the future. Providing a technology to help stimulate the plant to do what it needs to do means looking at it from a more holistic perspective, which is now an area that's really on the radar with regard to a lot of the major companies.

                                    The big four major chemical companies that dominate the agriculture industry are also engaged in this shift, engaged in acquisitions and advancement in those technologies. It’s exciting to see the arena blossom, so to speak, and see other companies engage in that, obviously from a competitive standpoint. It causes all of us to be more competitive, to advance our technology, advance our growth and what we're trying to do for the farmer. I would say that competition breeds more success. I’m excited about that. It doesn't hurt, from an economic standpoint, that farmers have a greater willingness to try out and to experiment with those new things and new technologies.

Tom:                            Let's talk about biostimulants for a moment. For those who are not aware of what they are, if you could explain what they are, and also how they are used in crop development efficiency.

Steven:                        It’s a term that's been batted around a little bit, and it’s being batted around, I'd say, by regulatory bodies. The easiest answer is that it’s a technology that stimulates a biological process – hence, “biostimulant.” It can be misconstrued to some extent because a lot of synthetic chemicals, for example, a glyphosate herbicide, are developed to stimulate a response. That response just happens to be desiccation or death — growth regulators designed to simulate a response. I think the main difference would be that it's taking technologies, hormones, plant metabolites and other naturally occurring functions and then using those to stimulate a response that the plant might already be doing naturally.

                                    If I could use a specific example, when we incorporate a technology like one of our biostimulants and we apply that technology to stimulate that plant to defend itself against an impending attack, what we're doing is essentially priming that plant to be prepared for an attack so that it can then mitigate it.

                                    I think an easy analogy would be taking a vitamin C tablet to try to keep yourself from getting sick. We take that a little bit further with the research capabilities that we have at Alltech and evaluate the process from a metabolic perspective. We look and see “Okay, when you apply X, this is what happens.” By having those technologies — and we've developed those technologies from a longstanding commitment to research and innovation from a fermentation perspective, and even from a disease perspective. We apply that same technology to prime that plant or identify specifically what that hormone is and apply it.

                                    So, if I can come back to your original question: What is a biostimulant? It is a technology that’s more naturally derived and used to stimulate a plant response. It’s more of a holistic approach to that side of the crop business.

Tom:                            Are there any particular regions of the world where this is catching on more than others?

Steven:                        Yes. Latin America is a big area that's really caught on. With the regulatory frameworks and government bodies, a lot of countries — Spain, for example — have biostimulant regulations tailored around specifically what you're trying to achieve. So, regulatory frameworks can be a hindrance in some aspect, but they can be a guidance in others. We’ve been a little bit behind on that in some of the other countries — and I’ll throw the U.S. in that category, for specific purposes — but we're developing and working within those frameworks right now to make sure those guidelines are managed.

                                    If we have an established regulation, it's easy for us to adhere to and make sure that we're providing a technology that should be provided to the customer. Obviously, regulations are there to protect the consumer from companies that maybe don't have quite the ability to take advantage of that. So, it’s an area that, particularly in Latin America — Europe recently is going to have new regulations that are coming here in this upcoming year — permits them to take on that industry and allow us to then tailor our technology specifically to that regulation. I would say, to really indicate the early adopters, it would probably be Brazil. That's one of our most successful markets — Latin America and some of the European-specific countries.

Tom:                            Some of the experts we hear from are now predicting that the global biopesticide market is going to double within the next five years. What are biopesticides, and what's driving that growth?

Steven:                        A biopesticide is of a natural origin, a biological origin. It could be a bacterium. It could be a fungus. It could also be a material that is harvested from one of those specific examples. It is targeted specifically to the pest. That arena has really blossomed, and it is a part of the biological biostimulant arena. It has blossomed as a result of the competition that I was speaking about earlier. It also comes from the demand of the consumer to mitigate pesticide use, synthetic pesticide use, to mitigate what's going onto that crop, what's going into that system. A big driver of that is the consumer, but it also stems from a lot of the major players in the agricultural chemical industry getting involved and specifically making acquisitions or adhering to that call from the consumer and driving the business forward.

                                    At Alltech, we're really excited about that, and we have technologies we’re working on right now specifically for biofungicide applications. It's a longer framework with regard to the regulation, but it's an area that's a definite focus, particularly for the future of agriculture. It’s an area where we're going to continue to increase and continue to blossom with regard to the economic impact. The consumer, especially with social media and with the technology that we have today and everything at our fingertips, wants to know exactly what's going into that lettuce or that strawberry.

                                    So, it's just going to continue to grow from that aspect.

Tom:                            There was some press last year about the Cavendish banana being in trouble, and I know that Alltech has a project underway in Costa Rica. I'm not sure if that involves the Cavendish. Does it?

Steven:                        The Cavendish banana is a monoculture, and the concern there is Panama disease. From the standpoint of the Cavendish bananas, we're a part of research and innovation in the banana in Costa Rica — the banana production area down there. The challenge is that they're experiencing, similar to the citrus industry, a disease that's impacting them for which there isn’t an answer right now.       

                                    We’re continuing to work on a similar disease that impacts production: black sigatoka in Costa Rica. This is another project geared toward developing solutions, which was initiated by Dr. Lyons specifically, and from our customers, to help combat some of these challenges.

                                    We do work in the Philippines as well. It’s an area we’re trying to expand in and where they're seeing this disease that you're referencing there from the Cavendish side.

                                    So, we're continuing to look at ways that we can mitigate and, if possible, come up with the “silver bullet” through the research programs that we have going on there.

                                    Specifically, in Costa Rica, the banana production and the work we're doing down there has been a big focus for the Alltech Crop Science research program. It’s been an area where we're really trying to help producers to not only combat a disease, but mitigate their chemical use within a banana production portfolio.

Tom:                            What other developments and trends in crop science and farming appear to be especially promising right now?

Steven:                        I would say the digital aspect. We couldn't not identify the digital aspect: precision farming; the ability for tractors to specifically pinpoint how much individual plants need of a nutrient application; disease identification platforms; we were looking recently at being able to identify a disease before it's even present. I would say the digital area and digital computer technology side is an area that has really continually compounded over the years.       

                                    Precision farming, in general, the technology where we're identifying X amount of nutrients for X amount of plant is — to be honest with you — mindboggling to me. If you can go to a cornfield and individually treat a corn plant because of its own soil microclimate within and around its roots, that's the way that you're going to continue to grow yields and production. So that’s one particular area to keep an eye on.

                                    I would say on the regulation side, too, you're going to see a lot of different types of regulations. I think you're going to see a lot of different chemistries that we’re very comfortable with and have proven to be effective be eliminated as a result of regulations. We, as a company, have to make sure that we’re ahead of that and are able to come up with new solutions for when the farmer is going to need a replacement for a lot of those chemicals.

                                    So, I would say new chemistries, new technologies from that arena and technology in general, from a computer aspect, and precision agriculture.

                                    Water, that's another area that we need to be looking out for. As I referenced in the beginning, a major city is going to run out of water. Water-use efficiency: How do we use water more effectively, and can we provide technologies that can better enable that water-use efficiency? That’s an area that's going to be a very important area specifically for us to focus on and an area that we need to be continuing to watch. If we run out of water — I can’t imagine. It was not imaginable to me until I saw a news clip and I was blown away by it. But if you don't have water-use efficiency, then we lose a lot of the ability for the farmer to do what he needs to do.

                                    So, that's probably an area to really focus on.

Tom:                            One technology that you mentioned early in your response that really caught my ear is the ability, through digital technology, I assume, to anticipate disease. What is that?

Steven:                        The ability to identify a pathogen before it becomes a nuisance to the crop. A lot of diseases that we experience in cropping systems are already there. When they become a pathogen depends upon its growth cycle. So, being able to identify if I have a presence of a Rhizoctonia, for example, if I know that it’s there and I know the best way to mitigate that turning into a pathogen that’s going to impact my crop yields, that’s what I was referencing — being able to look at DNA, RNA or take a soil sample and identify specifically what's there and what groups of pathogens are prevalent, could provide the opportunity to take care of a challenge before it even arises.

                                    That’s one focus area – identifying specifically what’s in the soil. I believe the statistic is that we know about two percent of what's in the soil. We have the other 98 percent to identify with regard to the microbiome perspective, but we need more advancement in that arena. Being able to identify a pathogen, and when we should be concerned with the pathogen being present, is an area for a lot of focus and a lot of research with universities across the globe.

Tom:                            Another challenge that's been identified by the Alltech Harvest Analysis the past couple of years: mycotoxins detected in silage. What is going on in that area? What sort of research do you have underway?

Steven:                        Sure. Alltech’s mycotoxin management programs that we have in place are very successful programs in which we’re able to mitigate that from a harvested perspective. One of the areas that we're looking at on a crop science level is how we mitigate that issue on the front end. A healthy plant is better able to withstand a disease impact. One area that dovetails off of what the animal side of the business is doing is that we’re trying to identify specifically how our programs can mitigate that mycotoxin production from the start. As I mentioned, a healthy plant is better able to withstand disease. We look at tailoring our nutrition programs and tailoring our biological biostimulant programs to that specific crop to identify how we can we promote a healthier, more nutritious plant, in turn reducing the mycotoxin.

                                    Our success has been from post-harvest and being able to mitigate those factors. I'd say what's going on now is how we bridge all those facets — looking at it essentially from the seed to the silage. That’s one area that we've been working closely on with our colleagues from the animal side.  

Tom:                            Speaking of the animal side — we've been focused mostly on the crop side — but the majority of businesses in the Alltech family of companies are engaged in animal health and nutrition. Does your work within crop sciences have an impact on animal health and nutrition?

Steven:                        It's an interesting question. Before I joined Alltech, when I considered, for example, alfalfa or corn silage from an agronomic standpoint, I looked at quality and I looked at yield. At Alltech, when we look at alfalfa, we look at it from a milk-per-acre perspective, and that’s an interesting dynamic. Being an agronomic company that’s part of an animal company, we’re able to look at crops from a different paradigm. We’re able to tailor solutions, and we're building programs to provide a more efficient feed through the agronomic sector.

                                    We've looked at it from a dairy production standpoint when we incorporate our technologies in alfalfa grown for silage — for milk production, how we increase production from the field. I think it makes complete sense when you think of it and you hear it for the first time. “Okay, I see more milk by that cow eating better silage.” It’s just being able to go and talk to the animal scientists from a crop scientist perspective and work together on adding benefits through the feed. How do we increase that quality from the crops when that crop is in the field? I guess the short answer is, yes, we have developed nutritional programs or biological programs to increase that milk production, to increase that quality of silage.

                                    It’s an area that I think is fascinating to be a part of because, coming from the agronomic sector, I never would have thought about the animal side, and I would say it's probably the same vice versa. Usually, you stay within the lines with regard to what you're working on, and maybe there’s some overlap, but again, you typically just don’t think of that perspective.

                                    I would say a lot of the best ideas that we have in crop science have come from looking at the animal side and working together as one company. So, it’s been a big success for us.

                                    Also, we have the ability through some of the recent acquisitions made by Alltech and the growth of our animal feed business to provide an all-encompassing toolbox for our customer. We can go to a farm and deliver, not just feed, but crop inputs for that animal. The majority of farmers aren’t just growing corn, and they're not just raising pigs or working just from a dairy perspective — they’re encompassing a lot of different facets. We need to deliver an all-encompassing toolbox. The more we can deliver, the more value it is for the farmer and for the consumer. It’s a neat area to be a part of, and it’s nice to be a part of Alltech to be able to do that.

Tom:                            Steven, anything that we haven’t touched on here that you’d like to mention?

Steven:                        From a crop science perspective, it's been interesting to see the growth —and you reference the market — I think over the next five years, it’s going to be an exciting time —  not just for Alltech or Alltech Crop Science, but for the entire industry — with regard to regulation changes, with technologies that are being cycled through, with acquisitions and with the development of technology.

                                    Agriculture is exciting, and it’s continuing to evolve, and I would say that, from an Alltech Crop Science perspective, we're really excited to see where this goes. Our job as a company is to try to stay ahead of that and try to estimate where we see dips in the road and to try to combat a disease that we’re focusing on and be ahead of that threat.

                                    It’s going to be exciting to see a lot of projects come to fruition here in the next couple years. It’s an exciting time for agriculture and an exciting time for Alltech. I’m really looking forward to the next five years to come.

Tom:                            Dr. Steven Borst, general manager of Alltech Crop Science. Thank you so much.

Steven:                        Thank you.

Have a question or comment?

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Dr. Kristen Brennan, a research project manager at the Alltech Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

Click below to listen to the podcast:

                                    Dr. Kristen Brennan is a research project manager at the Alltech Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition in Nicholasville, Kentucky. In this interview with Tom Martin, Brennan helps us gain a better understanding of her field, nutrigenomics, and its role in sustainable agriculture.

Tom:                            What is the science of nutrigenomics?

Kristen:                        The easiest way to think about nutrigenomics is to break the word down into what it is: “nutri" and “genomics.” What we're aiming to study with nutrigenomics is how nutrition — whether that’s nutrients, forms of nutrients, diets, timing of diets — influences the animal's genome. So, we’re not changing the genome, but influencing the activity of all the genes of that animal’s genome.

Tom:                            Is this an outgrowth of the human genome project, or has it been around a lot longer than that?

Kristen:                        Nutrigenomics is something that's been around forever. From the time the first living organism evolved, it needed nutrients, and those nutrients had influence on the activity of the genes within that animal or cell. The thing that we've done within the last several years is to figure out how to capture that information. It's always been there, we just never had a way of measuring it before. Technologies like genome sequencing are the core foundation for measuring what we're seeing.

Tom:                            Is there a point in time when we realized that nutrients were having an impact on genetic expression?

Kristen:                        I think we’ve known for a long time the importance of nutrition. Centuries and centuries ago, they had an idea that nutrition had a vital role. I don't know if we knew at that point, really, what DNA was and what genes did, but we knew that nutrition could influence the outcome, or a phenotype of an animal — what we're seeing on the outside — and how important it was for good health.

Tom:                            What are the advantages of nutrigenomics in animal studies?

Kristen:                        What I think makes this field so exciting is that, first of all, when we’re dealing with actual sampling, we need a very small sample amount. We can do this with, for instance, a small draw of blood from an animal, or we can take a small biopsy. So, you're not having to euthanize an animal to get tissue.

                                       Even more of an advantage is the amount of information we get. If you think about most genomes, you're talking about thousands of genes. We can measure in a single snapshot how every one of those genes is behaving in response to a diet or nutrition. That is an amazing amount of information.

                                       The other advantage is that it can be really rapid. From the time we get a sample to the time we have an output of data, it can be as short as just a few days in the lab. So, a lot of information, small input and a ton (of data) in a very rapid way.

Tom:                            And are you able to understand why some animals respond differently than others to the very same nutrients?

Kristen:                        Yes. We can use this information to understand that. An example would be healthy versus diseased animals and why nutrition may play a role in how they respond to that illness. More and more, we're starting to understand how differences on a genetic level — different breeds of animals, different production states, things like that — can influence how that animal responds.

Tom:                            Are you able to dig down into it and figure out how nutrients and bioactive components in the food turn on or turn off certain genes?

Kristen:                        Yes. The biggest amount of information we get is just a simple “Do they or do they not turn genes on or off?” So, how does each individual gene activity respond to what you're feeding? As we’re understanding that more and more, we can take a step back and start to understand how they're doing it. They are what we call signaling pathways, which are like, if you set up a row of dominoes and you hit the first one, it sets everything off. It’s the same thing with gene activity. There is a series of molecules that are responsible for regulating or activating other ones. And we can start to decipher how we get from the nutrient that we’re feeding or the diet we're feeding to that endpoint, that last domino in the line.

Tom:                            You can actually target issues that call for some kind of nutritional intervention?

Kristen:                        Yes. And that's obviously one of the most exciting applications of this research. We can use this to define precision nutrition.

                                    One of the challenges with feeding animals, or people in general, is that there are so many environmental factors that influence how an animal responds to diet — things like illness and disease, but also production state, where they're living, what their basal diets are. And so, we can use this technology to get precise information on how we can use nutrition to get the best performance or best health out of that animal.

Tom:                            How do you carry out your research? What goes on in Kristen Brennan’s laboratory?

Kristen:                        It’s magic! This research is done in several steps. It’s really a team effort. The simplest study we have is between two groups of animals, and because so many things could influence gene expression, we want to make sure that those two groups of animals are as identical as possible — same breed, sex, age, production state, and they’re housed in similar environments. The only thing we want different between those two groups is the nutrient we’re interested in.

                                    For instance, if we’re looking at a form of a mineral like selenium, we might have one diet that contains selenium in the form of sodium selenite, and we might have the exact same diet for the other group that has selenium in the form of organic selenium like our Sel-Plex® product. Once we have fed these diets for a given amount of time — it just depends on what we're interested in looking at, what tissues and what nutrients we’re evaluating — then we obtain a sample. It can be as simple as just a very tiny muscle biopsy or a few milliliters of blood. We bring that to the lab, and our laboratory technicians will essentially take that tissue, rupture the cellular membranes and then the nuclear membranes and purify what we call the mRNA, or the transcripts, that are located within the nucleus. We make sure that transcript, or a total RNA, is of super high quality and purity because these assays are so precise. We have high standards for what we can use.

                                       And then we use a commercially available DNA microarray. And what that allows us to do is profile. It has probes for each gene on the animal's genome — for example in the case of a chicken, it has something like 18,000 probes — and that allows us to measure whether the mRNA, or the transcript, for each of those genes has been increased or decreased in response to the nutrient that we fed.

                                       At the end, we get a long spreadsheet that says gene A is increased, gene B unchanged, gene C is decreased.

                                       Then the tough part comes, and that is the data analysis. So, we have all of these data points — you’re talking about thousands — and it is sort of like taking one of those huge puzzles. If you took that box of puzzle pieces and threw it on the ground, you would just have a giant mess, right? When I get that Excel spreadsheet of thousands of rows and columns, that’s what it’s like, essentially. So, we need help to try to piece those puzzle pieces together. If we took one piece out, we might find a corner and that's really important. Just like if I look at that spreadsheet, I might find a gene that's very important, that's very highly increased or decreased. That's a starting point.

                                    What we really need to do to see the big picture is piece those puzzle pieces together. We use what we call bioinformatics — essentially biological statistics — and we use software programs that say, okay, these 100 genes are related, they all have a common biological function, and based on their activity, we predict that biological function to increase or decrease. And that helps us make sense of this information.

                                    So, just like piecing those puzzle pieces together, we get that big picture of what's going on inside an animal that results in what we're seeing on the outside like improved growth, or improved feed efficiency, or improved markers of health.

Tom:                            I'm under the impression that the “Holy Grail” for you would be to find and establish a link between nutritional genomics approaches and applied nutritional research. Can you explain?

Kristen:                        Sure. The ultimate goal, at least in my view, for nutrigenomics is when we do traditional nutrition studies, we take an experimental diet, we feed it to an animal and we look at a phenotypic output. So, what do we see in the whole animal? That might be body weight change, growth rates, feed efficiency — things we can measure in the whole cow or by just looking at the animal. We might look at blood markers, stuff like that. What often is lacking and what we can use nutrigenomics for is, how do we get from point A to point B? How do we get from feeding this diet to the response in the whole animal?

                                       What nutrigenomics gives us is a tool to look at a molecular reason for those changes. We can use nutrigenomics to figure out, are we affecting energy expenditure in the cell? Are we affecting protein translation in the muscle? Things like this can help us explain what we're seeing in that animal instead of just guessing on how something works.

Tom:                            Does this technology, nutrigenomics, reduce our reliance on large-scale animal studies, and is it less invasive than the traditional approach?

Kristen:                        I think so. When we do these studies, we can work with a much smaller number (of animals) per treatment. So, where you might need hundreds of animals to get, say, carcass quality measurements that are significant, we can use six or 10 animals per treatment and still get some of the same information that would explain why we see changes in a large animal. Obviously, they're complementary, but we use this technology to minimize the number of animals we need per treatment.

                                      The other advantage is the obtaining of samples. We don't need a whole kilo of skeletal muscle to do our analysis. We need a tiny amount. So, that really is noninvasive. We can use a simple blood draw that is noninvasive and get this information out of that.

Tom:                            The 21^st century farm is a changed place compared with that of the previous century. A big reason for that is the arrival of a lot of science, technology and big data. If we were to take your science, nutrigenomics, out of the laboratory and into the farm, how would producers use what you've learned?

Kristen:                        I think one of the major ways they can use it is precision nutrition — really formulating diets to meet the actual needs of an animal. And also to understand the form versus function of different nutrients. So, how do we get the best that we can get out of an animal through nutrition? Nutrigenomics gives us that tool to understand how.

Tom:                            To carry that further, beyond helping to determine what will work for an animal's genetic type, is nutrigenomics helping explain why we need to find what works for a given animal?

Kristen:                        Absolutely. And I think it really helps push the idea of precision behind nutrition. For so long, we've overfed nutrients. We haven't really paid attention to form versus function. Nutrigenomics is giving us reasons why form is so important in nutrients, and why precise levels are important. We're taking the guessing game out of animal nutrition.

                                       I think as our population grows and the need for food continues to increase, that really optimizing nutrition based on an animal’s genetic potential is going to be really, really important.

Tom:                            How can this genomic information help us better understand nutrition and nutrient science?

Kristen:                        That’s a great question. This gives us a good understanding of the hidden effects of nutrition — the things that we don't really understand; why we see the changes. Why are we seeing increased energy efficiency with different forms of selenium, for instance? If we just look at our traditional nutrition research, we have no idea. But we use nutrigenomics to say, “Okay, well, the genes that control, say, mitochondrial growth in the skeletal muscle in the animals are turned on by Sel-Plex, and that explains why we see changes in energy expenditure.”

                                       That’s the type of stuff that we can get through traditional animal nutrition research, and nutrigenomics really helps push that information ahead and gives us a better understanding of how nutrients function — things that we can't see by just looking at an animal.

Tom:                            One final question: Among the things that you're working on right now, what really interests you and excites you?

Kristen:                        Everything, as a true scientist! One of the areas that I'm completely fascinated by, and have been for years — and we've done quite a bit of work on it, but it's just something that I start to think about and almost gives me a headache — is the idea of nutritional programming. This is the concept of how early life nutrition — whether that's in a neonatal animal or even in the gestating diet, looking at offspring — how nutrition early in life influences an animal throughout its lifespan.

                                    We've done a lot of work to look at some of the things that happen, like gene expression changes that occur. When we change the diet of an animal in the first 96 hours of life, those patterns and the changes stay with that animal throughout its lifespan, and that completely fascinates me.

                                       I think that's an application that is something that can be applied through all different species of animals, whether that’s livestock or even humans. We think about how you are what you eat, but you're also what your mother ate and what her mother ate and then maybe what her dad ate. It starts to really fascinate you. So, that’s probably one the most exciting areas that we work on.

Tom:                            Dr. Kristen Brennan is a research project manager at the Alltech Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Thank you for joining us.

Kristen:                        Thank you.

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