Elizabeth Doughman, editor, WATT PoultryUSA and Poultry Future: Hello and welcome to WATT Poultry Chat. I'm Elizabeth Doughman, the editor of WATT PoultryUSA and Poultry Future.
This Watt Poultry Chat is brought to you by DSM-Firmenich. As a purpose-led company, DSM-Firmenich offers science-based solutions and groundbreaking innovations fundamental to the health, well-being and sustainability of farm animals.
DSM-Firmenich’s Animal Nutrition and Health group leverages a true end-to-end portfolio spanning essential products, performance solutions and precision services to help feed and animal protein producers address current and future challenges and to support the transition to more sustainable food systems.
Joining us today is Dr. Chasity Pender, senior technical manager – Poultry, DSM-Firmenich.
Thanks for joining us, Chasity.
Doughman: Are all probiotics the same in terms of their benefits?
Dr. Chasity Pender, senior technical manager – Poultry, DSM-Firmenich: Absolutely not. There's such a wide diversity when it comes to the microbes that are used for probiotics.
For most of them, you'll see a lot of the same genus and species like Bacillus subtilis, for example. But even within a species, there's a lot of diversity once you get down to the strain level and what those strains can do.
The analogy I like to use that a lot of people resonate with is to think about dogs. All dogs, regardless of the breed, are the same genus and species. But then when we get down to the breed level, we have, say, a Labrador retriever and a French bulldog. They're the same species, but obviously they were built for completely different purposes, the same as with probiotics.
There's a wide diversity of microbes with the wide diversity of functionalities and modes of action that they can provide when being used in a probiotic.
Doughman: How do you categorize the different types of probiotics available on the market?
Pender: There's a couple different ways you can break the market down and categorize the different types of probiotics. The way I generally do it is by their type.
There is your lactic acid-based bacteria. These are the ones that are known to produce lactic acid, as you would imagine. These are your Lactobacilli bifidobacteria, for example. Then you have your bacillus-based products. Those are usually Bacillus liotiformus and Bacillus subtilis.
Then you have your uncharacterized ones that are just a mix of different microbes, of unknown characterization and then you have some yeast-based products.
The other way to categorize them is by their function. You can either categorize them or put them in the bucket of health benefits, like improving intestinal integrity intestinal development and gut function, or you can put them in the more nutritional space, as there's some probiotics that can actually produce enzymes that have a nutritional benefit.
Doughman: What are the main differences between lactic acid based and bacillus-based probiotics?
Pender: The biggest differences between those two groups of probiotics is in their life cycle.
With bacillus-based products, for example, when you buy them in a bag, they come in spore form. They go into a dormant phase called a spore, and they need to be activated once they're ingested and become functional within the intestine. These are usually derived from soil or environmental samples, so they're not considered native to the intestinal microbiota that's normally found in poultry.
Whereas lactic acid-based bacteria – so again, those Lactobacilli, those bifidobacteria – those are native and you can usually find them in the intestines of poultry. Normally those do not have that part of the lifecycle where they go dormant and produce a spore. They are active and as soon as they're ingested, their mode of action starts. As soon as they're ingested, they're activated.
But because they don't have those spores that protect them to kind of help them get through the pelleting process if we're using them during feed manufacturing, they need to have some form of protection. So if you're using a lactic acid-based probiotic, it needs to have some type of micro encapsulation. Or alternatively, there are some products on the market that you put in the refrigerator to help keep them viable.
Doughman: Thank you so much for sharing these insights. For more information on the solutions discussed here today, visit DSM-Firmenich at www.dsm-firmenich.com/anh.
Thanks again, Chasity, and thanks to you for tuning in.