Dr. Alastair Thomas of Anitox discusses the persistent challenges of disease control in poultry production, the importance of focusing on early bird development and emerging pathogens affecting the industry. He emphasizes how feed contamination plays a significant role in bird health and the need for practical applications of microbiome research.
Transcript of interview with Dr. Alastair Thomas, global head of poultry nutrition, Anitox
Jackie Roembke, editor-in-chief, WATT Feed Group and Feed Strategy: In your opinion, what do you think is the No. 1 issue facing the feed industry today?
Dr. Alastair Thomas, global head of poultry nutrition and health, Anitox: It's always going to remain disease. There's going to be a development of new and emerging pathogens, and there's still issues which just haven't been effectively resolved. Things like Salmonella, Campylobacter and Clostridia remain a persistent issue in the industry. But you put avian influenza, metapneumovirus and a large selection of viral challenges, biosecurity still remains a major concern for the producers, and sometimes it's very difficult to manage that in a biological environment, so persistent disease outbreaks remain a challenge for international trade and import, export and local poultry production. I don't think I can see that really changing in the next five to 10 years.
Roembke: As an expert in the industry and in this field, what sorts of innovations and research and technology have you particularly excited? What are you particularly interested in? What new developments have piqued your interest?
Thomas: I think every time I come here, it's clear that there's so much technology out there available to the poultry producer, and what do they actually choose. So many suppliers of enzymes and probiotics and prebiotics, and certainly over the last five to 10 years, customers are comfortable using those technologies to manage their poultry health, sometimes in the absence of antibiotics, but I think that next stage of technology around, we have so much opportunity around AI (artificial intelligence), we have a lot of opportunity around genetic modification to allow us to go to that next generation of solutions, which I don't think we're there yet.
I think the technology and the research is perhaps there, but I think moving forward, how we make that jump to poultry production is going to be there's a gap that you get a certain amount of performance improvement around current technologies, and I think there's still an opportunity, because we're not really reaching that genetic potential of the bird yet. Whatever Aviagen and Cobb actually show us is the high potential of these birds, there's still a lot of environmental and nutrition and disease factors preventing them getting to that full potential. And so the next generation of more targeted solutions, I think, will really allow us to reach that full potential for the bird.
Roembke: Beyond additive solutions, are there any other technologies that you think may impact poultry production in the future?
Thomas: I think maybe not the technologies, but where the focus can be in the industry. I think generally we look at the broiler, the growing bird. There's a lot of feed that goes into that animal to make that kilo of meat, but I think more of a laser focus on things like the actual hen and the broiler breeder really sets up that production process for the most efficient production. And so allowing that to adjust to the chick itself, and that early life of the bird is really important for the success of the older bird. And so if we could get more science and research and technology to focus on the young bird — seven-day, 14 days of age of the bird, I think, will allow us to really make sure that by the time it reaches the processing plant, you've really got your most cost-effective kilo of meat. So I think the life stage is a lot more important than the technology per se.
Roembke: You mentioned how disease challenges are the No. 1 issue, regardless of the species. From the feed perspective, how much microbial contamination do you really see in feed?
Thomas: A surprising amount. The obvious culprits, usually for the producer the litter in the housing environment of the bird, or even the hatchery. At Anitox we've been really focusing on feed sampling and understanding fundamentally what's the baseline of contamination in the feed. Things like corn and soy and certainly meat and bone meal, fish meal have a significant potential for contamination for the bird, and so our baseline sampling is found, sometimes as much as three to 5% of the feed is actually containing Enterobacter and Salmonella, and potential contaminants that really can impact that early development of the gut microbiome and have a negative impact on the young bird.
Roembke: We talk about new developments and new insights coming online, where do you see microbiome analysis going, particularly in poultry?
Thomas: That's a really good question. I think some of the challenges are that the technology is there to a certain extent to see what the microbiome represents and those individual components of the microbiome, how that then correlates to the actual performance of the animal, is going to be the real challenge, and remains a challenge for the producer.
Suppliers or researchers will understand the microbiome and do this comparative analysis and show us a good microbiome and a bad microbiome, but what does that actually mean for the health of the bird and the productivity of the bird in the field? I don't think we've really got to answering that question quite yet. So better partnership with the producers, I think, is important. Understanding what's happening out there in the field is really especially important, but really making it simpler, I think, for the producer is the most important component, because you can make things look so complicated with the microbiome analysis, and I, as a microbiologist, can even get confused at looking at some of this data.
The important thing is, how do we translate that into simple changes and simple metrics for the producer that they can make interventions that allows them to increase the productivity once we have that data analysis available to them.
Roembke: Are you seeing any pathogens emerging and causing issues?
Thomas: Certainly there's always emerging pathogens in virology and in viruses. But on the bacterial side, I think there's always the main bad characters of Salmonella and Clostridium but, in a lot of reasons, I've been seeing a lot more Enterococcus-associated mortality. This was traditionally just an issue for some spinal malformations in the bird.
But I think we started seeing, certainly in the U.S., for example, a lot more early bird mortality associated with the Enterococcus to the point where some of my integrators have been really saying that traditionally, all their early mortality was down to E. coli, and trying to manage E. coli in the bird in that first seven days, but now up to 50% some integrators have been saying of that mortality is actually Enterococcus now, and not E. coli. And there's a lot less solutions available out there in the marketplace for that Enterococcus control.
And so development of some solutions to target that bacteria, I think, will be certainly well received in the industry and we here at Anitox are really trying to understand how feed has an important role in that enterococcal challenge, and entering the birds at that early age to cause that issue.
Roembke: Any other interesting insights, and perhaps something that I haven't asked you about, that you'd like to share with our audience?
Thomas: Just to really reiterate around how we better focus on the health of that early bird. It's too easy to focus on getting that most efficient kilo of meat to the production plant, but there's a lot of transfer from the breeder hen into the hatchery and into that early bird as it hatches. I think better understanding how we can manage that and focus on that is sometimes not approached by enough research and enough suppliers. So if we can really zoom in and laser focus on that life stage of the bird, I think it's going to be more cost effective for the integrator and the poultry producer themselves. It's a smaller component of the diet, but really it's going to allow them to set their birds off on the best growth trajectory, I think, for real success at the end, when they bring it to processing.