The poultry industry has been going through significant changes due to macro trends including geopolitical situations, inflation, disease outbreaks, feed raw material availability, demand fluctuation, etc. We sat down with Dr. Raj Murugesan, Global Poultry Head for dsm-firmenich Animal Nutrition and Health, to discuss the measures producers could adopt to protect their flocks from health and nutritional challenges, make them perform efficiently, and promote quality poultry products to consumers with confidence. The company sees its role as helping the poultry industry grow aggressively to fulfill the growing protein requirement of an ever-growing global population.
[Feedinfo] According to Rabobank, poultry, egg and feed prices are expected to remain high in most countries over the course of 2024. How is this affecting the industry?
|
Dr. Raj Murugesan
|
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] Poultry feed comprises about 70% of production cost, and an increase in the cost of feed materials is bound to increase the cost of production of chicken meat and eggs. Although feed material costs are not as high as 2022, they’re still about 10-15% higher than 2021 levels. The EU, whose producers had been strongly affected by the cost situation in 2022, is now experiencing more favorable margin conditions. However, in some cases, regional factors are aggravating the situation: for example, the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreak in LATAM, which has mostly affected Andean countries at this point. |
Demand for chicken meat & eggs in general has increased due to inflationary pressure across global markets, which is a great opportunity for growth. According to USDA, Brazil will increase chicken meat exports by 8.5% YOY in 2023, as no HPAI outbreak has been reported in commercial operations so far. However, the potential consequences of a HPAI outbreak in Brazil would be significant given it’s the largest chicken meat exporter and has almost 50% market share in China’s chicken imports. And many markets are still recovering from the HPAI outbreaks they experienced in the last couple of years, including the US.
Overall, the continuing threat of HPAI outbreaks, combined with elevated feed and production costs, have consistently put pressure on the margins for producers, which are hovering below three-year average in key markets such as US, Brazil, China, Thailand, and India. This has had the effect of lowering the poultry growth forecast for 2023 to 1.4% from the initial projection of 2%.
[Feedinfo] How can poultry producers best navigate the situation?
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] To best navigate the current environment, poultry producers should focus on the three key areas: protect the flocks, help the flocks perform better, and promote the quality of poultry products. Protect the birds from health challenges such as coccidiosis, necrotic enteritis, mycotoxins, lameness, etc., through employing early detection tools and putting novel preventive health and mycotoxin risk management programs in place that will help to protect the birds and ensure their productivity while overcoming the growing antimicrobial resistance concern.
Secondly, as feed material costs are still relatively high, producers can optimize feed cost by using alternative energy and protein sources. In addition, adopting cost-effective nutritional programs to make laying hens and breeding hens perform better by increasing their longevity (number of weeks in production) and persistency (above standard rates of egg production and hatchability) can boost efficiency.
Lastly, ensure the quality of poultry products to promote them for a better bottom line through effective food safety and quality programs. This entails Salmonella control programs to reduce Salmonella load in chicken meat and eggs, developing enriched meat and eggs for niche markets, while enhancing transparency and resource utilization across the operation, to not just boost profitability but also ‘promote’ better products to improve public health and environmental measures.
[Feedinfo] What are the current pressures on producers’ health programs? What opportunities do you see to address these challenges?
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] One big pressure on producers is to help slow the development of antimicrobial resistance caused by anticoccidial chemicals, ionophores, and antibiotic growth promoters in conventional health programs. However, preventing diseases such as coccidiosis, necrotic enteritis, lameness, and mycoplasma is a critical aspect in protecting birds. Hence, the key is to ensure the birds are protected at the same time as the antimicrobial resistance is brought down through a reduction in the use of these conventional drugs.
While the industry has made great strides in identifying and deploying alternatives to antimicrobials, such as feed additives and cocci vaccines, one challenge with cocci vaccines is that they provide protection through eliciting a sub-clinical coccidiosis which negatively affects performance. Feed additives with unique modes of action such as synbiotics or precision biotics improve gut integrity and overcome this performance loss, making them valuable tools to be used alongside cocci vaccines.
Alternatively, antimicrobial reduction can also be achieved by lowering their inclusion levels or replacing them altogether if the situations allow. Here, producers should consider feed additives that have a direct mode of action against the causative pathogen for those diseases. For example, essential oils in combination with saponins have been shown to be highly efficacious against coccidiosis-causing Eimeria spp. However, due consideration should be given to the consistency of the feed additive’s efficacy and uniqueness of the technology behind it instead of resorting to generic or copycat ones.
Finally, new precision technologies such as VeraxTM can help with early detection of disease challenges using blood biomarkers and changes in the microbiome. For example, coccidiosis outbreaks can be detected 7-10 days in advance using blood biomarkers, giving producers valuable time to take action. VeraxTM can also ensure the effectiveness of preventive programs already in place as well as use machine learning to help identify the most promising intervention programs to be put in place.
[Feedinfo] Is "zero Salmonella" an achievable goal? If so, how does the industry need to adapt to reach it?
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] Only a few serovars of Salmonella are pathogenic to birds. Biosecurity and vaccination programs over the past decade have made it possible to reduce and even eliminate the incidence of Salmonellosis in birds. Still, birds can be carriers for Salmonella serovars that are pathogenic for humans and therefore pose a risk of food safety. Further, regulatory bans in many markets on formaldehyde, which was used in poultry feed against Salmonella, has also added to the challenge.
“Zero salmonella” is possible given a comprehensive Salmonella elimination program is implemented in the production process, since Salmonella has multiple entry points throughout the production system. It requires a comprehensive “5-point food safety program” covering feed, water, hatchery, bird (breeder and commercial broiler/layer), and processing facility.
The 5-point food safety program has elements such as effective organic acid blends that can eliminate Salmonella from the feed and water before the bird consumes it; hatchery application of a synbiotic to ensure the chicks hatched are not contaminated with Salmonella; synbiotic and precision-biotic combinations to eliminate vertical transmission from breeding flock and commercial flock to minimize the Salmonella load going into processing; and finally organic acid blends to keep the plant environment clean where the meat and eggs are processed and packed.
[Feedinfo] Will sustainability efforts be put on the back burner as the industry copes with these more pressing issues?
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] Not at all. I see sustainability not as a cost but as a tool for savings through improved efficiency: in that sense, investments in sustainability are also investments in long-term profitability. It is also critical to maintaining animal production's social license to operate that we handle all of these issues -- animal health and welfare, food safety and regulatory compliance, and local and global environmental concerns. We at dsm-firmenich focus on helping poultry producers to improve the efficiency as well as the sustainability of their operations.
Feed is the biggest contributor to the overall environmental footprint of poultry production, and there will be a continued focus on increasing feed efficiency especially when feed prices are high. Using alternative, low-cost protein and energy feed materials to help optimize amino acid-energy ratio with the use of feed enzymes is important to improving income over feed cost. In addition, efficient digestion and absorption of protein and phosphorus with the help of protease and phytase, respectively, helps not just to maximize the return on investment of feed but also to reduce ammonia and phosphorus emissions. Ensuring birds perform above and beyond their breed guidelines with proper vitamin and mineral supplementation ensures efficiency. Additionally, protecting birds from health challenges prevents drops in performance.
Regulatory and supply chain requirements encourage producers to start accounting and calculating the resource utilization across the poultry operation and identify the opportunities for efficiency gains. Our SustellTM intelligent sustainability service helps producers to accurately measure a farm’s full environmental footprint and scenario test potential interventions. This helps to ensure the overall investment’s return is maximized while improving sustainability and environmental safety and lowering food waste and emissions.
[Feedinfo] There is certainly a lot of talk about big data, artificial intelligence, etc. Do you think the potential for such technologies to impact the poultry industry is pure hype, or could it become reality?
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] There has always been a lot of data. What’s new is the innovation in data management that generates actionable insights. The intensive research we at dsm-firmenich have been doing over the past decade on how to collect, analyze, and interpret data has given us the pole position to bring effective data-based tools and services to market.
For several years now, we have been working with some of the largest poultry integrations and feed manufacturers in the world on specific applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence, notably an early-warning system to predict and avoid health and production issues, as well as a full environmental lifecycle assessment measurement and improvement. With our clients we’re seeing genuine opportunities to leverage these tools to improve efficiency and bottom-line results in large-scale production systems, and those first movers and adopters will be at an advantage when it comes to reaping the benefits.
Awareness and adoption of these technologies is on the rise and is set to accelerate considering the potential gains for the poultry industry: improved profitability, better sustainability, and higher animal welfare.
[Feedinfo] What are the most promising applications of data-based services for the poultry industry, in your opinion?
[Dr. Raj Murugesan] There are quite a few promising data-based applications that are currently available or that are about to arrive on the market. VeraxTM is an early detection tool that uses blood biomarkers, performance data, and metadata in models developed through machine learning to optimize health and nutrition, leading to improvements in animal health and performance.
VeraxTM can predict potential issues such as the outbreak, prevalence and severity of diseases, nutritional challenges, early chick mortality, and food safety concerns. This gives producers valuable insight to adopt appropriate preventive measures and intervention strategies. We’re also expanding the coverage to further challenges.
SustellTM is our intelligent sustainability service that takes a full lifecycle assessment approach to measure the complete environmental footprint of poultry production and scenario-test the most promising science-based solutions that improve the profitability and sustainability of poultry operations.
Furthermore, we’re working on expanding our machine learning and artificial intelligence capacity to predict bird performance through not just a least-cost feed formulation but also modeling the quality and quantity of nutrients in the feed and how they’ll be utilized by the bird. This will help the producers to know what the exact matrix of the feed is, and what it’ll deliver in terms of performance through the bird.
Our overall focus is to help producers optimize costs while protecting their birds, making their flocks perform better, and promoting product quality for consumers with confidence.
Published in association with dsm-firmenich
