Dr. Kimberly Livingston, director of technical services at Optum Immunity, shares insights on trends in animal nutrition, with a focus on gut health and immunity at VIV Asia 2025. She discusses innovative approaches to microbiome optimization, the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in disease detection, and how international trade might help address challenges in the U.S. egg market caused by avian influenza outbreaks.
Transcript of interview with Dr. Kimberly Livingston, director of technical services, Optum Immunity
Dr. Kimberly Livingston, director of technical services, Optum Immunity: My name is Dr. Kimberly Livingston. I'm the director of technical services at Optum Immunity.
Jackie Roembke, editor-in-chief, WATT Feed Group and Feed Strategy: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Livingston: I am originally from the Chicagoland area. I did my master's and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois under the direction of Dr. Carl Parsons. I did my doctorate degree at UC Davis, where I focused on studying poultry nutritional immunology.
Roembke: What's the No. 1 trend that you feel is influencing the feed industry today?
Livingston: The No. 1 trend that I feel is influencing the feed industry today really is finding products that improve gut health. Over the last 5-10 years, there's really been a major push in appreciation for the interaction of everything that makes up the gut. That is not just nutrition, but we have microbiome and the immune system that we're also contending with and finding products that are optimizing that microbiome for health and optimizing the immune response to where we get the best performance in the animals.
Roembke: Since you've been in Thailand and speaking with different industry stakeholders and visitors here in Asia, what would you say are the most popular topics of conversation, or the most top of mind issues among folks in Southeast Asia or in Thailand in particular?
Livingston: I think a lot of the top-of-mind issues and topics is really looking at these various gut health products and how we can integrate them together. Many of them have different modes of action, and we don't want to necessarily pick one over the other. They all work in different ways. Some can be synergistic, some can be antagonistic. So how do we utilize the information from the probiotics, the essential oils and alternative products, the new, up and coming products, and how we can make a cocktail that's really going to optimize that gut health for each different life stage of the animals.
Roembke: With a special interest in immunology, what research or different hot topics have really piqued your interest this year or in the last, say, 12 months?
Livingston: I think one of the really new innovative technologies that are coming on board, and a lot of companies are evaluating, is ways that we can get antibody technology or nanobodies to where using microorganisms that can make these antibodies in such a way that is economic and very targeted, whether for a particular protein or a particular pathogen within the gut, and that's really helping either optimize the immune response, make the microbiome more beneficial and really resulting in improved performance. So really that targeted effect on a particular microbe or performance measures.
Roembke: Obviously, there's a lot of buzz about the potential of AI and animal nutrition and health. Do you have any thoughts about how that may apply into the different areas of immunity and exploring ways of combating pathogens?
Livingston: I think artificial intelligence has a lot of potential within machine learning that we can learn from. As an industry, we've always been innovative and looking at different technologies and evaluating the microbiome, for instance. With the standard statistical analysis that we've had, we could not really dig into what all the information is. So now, putting all of that data into machine learning and utilizing artificial intelligence, we will be able to better connect how the animals responded, not just at the microbiome, but all physiological aspects. So we can pull in multiple parameters from blood biomarkers, microbiome, putting in the diet, looking at that general proximate analysis from the nutrition side, and get all of that data and use AI to really pick up trends and detect different states of disease for animals, and catch that stuff early.
And if we're able to catch those diseases early in infection, and we can treat them early, we will not have the large spikes in mortality that typically we wait and see. So there'll be a spike in mortality, which then alerts our life production team to go and open up some animals and see what they're battling with. And so using AI and that technology and all the data really will give us the opportunity to treat those animals sooner, without having that major spike in mortality. And ultimately will improve the health and welfare of all of our animal species.
Roembke: Excellent. Is there anything that you would like to talk about that we haven't touched on, where you're like, you know what? This is a really interesting macro trend, either related to markets or ingredient availability or things impacting the industry, even if they're not specifically food related.
Livingston: I think related to how the Asian market can really help with the U.S. market. There's a great potential. The U.S. is struggling significantly with a shortage of eggs, which is driving up the cost, and that's due to high pathogenic avian influenza. So we are able to open the markets to some of these, to Thailand and Vietnam and other Asian countries that they are able to produce eggs at a more cost effective that that can really help lessen the burden on the American consumer and really help out the consumers in general, globally with improving the efficiencies and the costs.