6 April 2021- Recent scientific evidence suggests that identifying the mycotoxin threat from feed sampling is an imperfect science.
For one thing, problems with collecting a representative sample, as well as the inconsistent distribution of mycotoxins through the feed, mean that it is difficult to be sure you have identified all the mycotoxins in your rations. And for another, identifying the presence of mycotoxins is a different matter from identifying the harm they are causing to the animals. This inspired the company to develop a more comprehensive mycotoxin testing concept complementing feed analysis with actual biomarkers in the blood of animals. Since its launch last year, this service, called Myco-Marker®, has been able to provide an entirely new dimension of data to help us understand better the mycotoxin threat landscape.
In the interview below, Innovad’s CEO Ben Letor joins Dr. Christos Gougoulias, head of innovation, and Dr. Arnau Vidal, global technical manager for toxins and stress control, to talk about what the company has learned by looking at a global threat at the level of individual animals, as well as how it has combined this service with its Escent® S mycotoxin-stress solution to be able to offer producers a comprehensive mycotoxin mitigation platform, called RISE®.
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[Feedinfo] Innovad argues that there is a problem of trust in the industry on the question of mycotoxin management. Can you explain where this comes from, in your view, and what the consequences of it are? [Ben Letor] Truthfully, despite the advances in analytical methodology over the last decade, the market has experienced an erosion in the trust on the subject of mycotoxin management as a whole. This is partly due to the oversaturation of the market with an unprecedented number of ‘toxin binders’ of highly questionable quality. |
Ben Letor |
[Dr. Christos Gougoulias] I would add that, to a large extent, producers around the world see no benefit in taking any measures at all for the mitigation of the mycotoxin risk, particularly in the poultry sector. From their view, there is no real value to a mitigation strategy, simply because the feed analysis (even with the application of state-of-the-art analytical chromatography) is pretty much a “hit and miss” affair. In other words, the producer lacks real trust in mycotoxin mitigation technologies because he cannot quantify the value and real benefit for his own animals. The producer cannot measure the benefit of such technologies in terms of animal performance and health.
[Dr. Arnau Vidal] This is rather alarming as recent scientific evidence highlights the synergistic and negative additive impact of natural exposure to multiple mycotoxins in terms of animal performance and health. Namely, the fact that even low levels (levels which are safe when looked in isolation) of multiple mycotoxins can negatively impact animal performance within the short life cycle of production animals, even in the case of broiler chickens. However, I totally share the producers’ concern in their skepticism when it comes to measuring the value of mitigation strategies with the current approaches.
[Feedinfo] Innovad launched Myco-Marker®, a service to detect mycotoxins in animals’ blood as well as in feed, last year. How has the service evolved since that time?
[Dr. Arnau Vidal] The service has advanced dramatically since last year! We have nearly doubled the number of biomarkers since the birth of the service, and we are now screening for an impressive 36 exposure biomarkers in blood alone. When you combine this with feed analysis, the total number increases to more than 42 mycotoxins.
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Dr. Christos Gougoulias
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[Dr. Christos Gougoulias] More importantly, we have been able to correlate the presence of mycotoxins in feed and the actual levels of mycotoxins (and their metabolites) in blood with their true impact on animal performance and health, specific to the farm. That is a real breakthrough in itself! |
[Feedinfo] Since the launch of Myco-Marker®, Innovad has had a chance to gather data on the mycotoxin threat around the world from the samples that have been taken. What kind of picture of the mycotoxin threat does your research paint? What have been the most surprising discoveries?
[Dr. Christos Gougoulias] Although physical contact has been extremely limited around the world, Innovad has still managed to carry out hundreds of Myco-Marker® analyses, and farms around the globe are already enjoying this unique and innovative service. After our first year of offering this service, some significant observations can be made. The first substantial outcome of the introductory Global Myco-Marker® Survey is that co-exposure to multiple mycotoxins is the norm – not the exception. Animals from nearly all farms (98%), were exposed to two or more mycotoxins and, a bit more than half (~51%) of the studied farms faced moderate to high mycotoxin risk, as animals were exposed to anything between 5 and 15 mycotoxins simultaneously.
The second substantial outcome was that blood analysis revealed mycotoxins threats which had been ignored in feed analysis. Namely, more than four out of five farm cases (~85%) would had been disregarded as ‘low’ risk without blood analysis. And within that, nearly 10% of the cases would had been wrongly considered ‘mycotoxins-free’, based solely on feed analysis. Thus, there is no doubt that mycotoxins are a real problem on all farms. The co-exposure detected in most of the studied farms is of concern because mycotoxins can have a synergistic or additive negative toxic effect.
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[Dr. Arnau Vidal] The most innovative part of the Myco-Marker® service is the ability to precisely detect mycotoxin biomarkers in blood and combine this with feed analysis to establish not only the real exposure to animals but also its relevant impact on their health and performance. So, another important breakthrough has been the correlation between mycotoxin exposure and the presence of certain animal clinical symptoms. For example, 86% of the poultry cases with necrotic enteritis confirmed co-exposure to deoxynivalenol and fumonisins, while 83% of the swine cases with reproductive problems had exposure to zearalenone and/or Alternaria mycotoxins. These types of associations have previously been reported in isolated academic experimental investigations, but have never been identified and confirmed at a large scale in real conditions. Only such data can help us truly understand and better evaluate the effectiveness of mycotoxin mitigation technologies, and therefore improve animal performance and reduce clinical symptoms. |
Dr. Arnau Vidal |
[Feedinfo] Can you get more specific on how this data differs from what mycotoxin surveys based solely on feed sampling can show?
[Dr. Christos Gougoulias] While feed surveys can provide an interesting picture of the mycotoxin trends for certain geographical regions, they are not able to either predict or to establish the specific mycotoxin threat occurring on each farm. Let me give an example to show the importance of identifying the specific mycotoxin risk of each farm. In this case, a large number of sows (~25%) from an English farm presented several worrying health issues (predominantly, vomiting and diarrhoea). Veterinarians could not identify the reason for the symptoms, so blood and feed samples were collected to identify the real mycotoxin exposure. Myco-Marker® detected that the sows in question were exposed to nine different mycotoxins with a substantial, unexpected, presence of aflatoxin in the blood (~55 ppb), although aflatoxin had not been identified in the feed. The sizeable mycotoxin harms caused by exposure to aflatoxin in a farm from UK could not have been predicted at all by a feed survey, as all feed surveys indicate a low presence/concentration of aflatoxins in central/north Europe. Also, the feed analysis proved inadequate as it missed the aflatoxin threat completely. This example clearly demonstrates the importance of implementing precise individual risk management assessments for each farm with state-of-the-art wet chemistry in feed and blood. We call for the industry to go beyond such one-off individual risk management assessments to tailor-made, client-driven continuous, long-term biomonitoring programs—not a generic “one-size-survey-fits-all” field.
[Feedinfo] What has an examination of animal biomarkers for mycotoxins shown about the efficacy of Innovad’s mitigation technology Escent® S? Under what kinds of conditions were the most recent tests run, and what were the results?
[Dr. Arnau Vidal] Escent® S was designed to act as a detoxifying and animal stress relief technology, always in the context of mycotoxin exposure. Previous in vitro testing has proven the ability of Escent® S to bind a great number of mycotoxins. However, in vitro results are not always an indication of an equal level of efficacy in vivo. For this reason, Innovad, with its partners at Ghent University (Belgium), deployed their joint blood biomarker IP to evaluate the in vivo detoxification efficacy of Escent® S, with very promising results. The research revealed that Escent® S exerted a significant detoxifying ability and reduced the systemic exposure of multiple mycotoxins in swine and poultry species. Although the findings themselves are very important, the real breakthrough has been the shift away from a simplistic toxin binding approach. Under the Escent® S treatment, even non-polar mycotoxins (like zearalenone) were systemically reduced as well.
However, for Innovad, it was indispensable to test the Escent® S Technology under real farm conditions, where animals are confronted by several stress factors simultaneously, such as weather and climate, low quality of feed, vaccinations, diet changes, etc. Thus, we recently finished a field trial with one of the biggest global players in broiler production deploying the RISE® platform (Myco-Marker® + Escent® S). The trial was from day 30 of age until slaughter (day 60) and involved a local, coloured chicken broiler breed in an open-house system. So, automatically you can imagine the difference in level of challenge compared to a European set-up. Two groups were tested side by side: the first consumed Escent® S at 1kg/T and the second consumed a competitor technology, again at 1kg/T, which served as the control group. Blood and feed from both groups were analysed frequently and general performance as well as clinical symptoms were monitored throughout the entire period. At the end of the trial blood analysis revealed that only 10% of animals consuming Escent® S had evidence of systemic exposure to traces of a single mycotoxin (deoxynivalenol), whereas 60% of animals from the control (competitor) group had evidence of systemic exposure to multiple mycotoxins (deoxynivalenol, aflatoxin, beauvericin and tenuazonic acid). The findings confirm without a doubt that Escent® S drastically reduces the systemic mycotoxin exposure where it is really needed i.e. in the real-world environment. That was also accompanied by lower levels of wet litter and reduced ammonia alongside reduced mortality and other clinical symptoms. The experiment also proved that Myco-Marker® is a reliable and powerful biomonitoring tool for animal exposure to mycotoxins and demonstrated its downstream impact evaluation on animal performance and health.
[Feedinfo] We have mainly been talking about Escent® S in the context of mycotoxin mitigation, but now you’ve just referred to it as a stress-control platform. What kind of stressors is Escent® S meant to combat? Is it correct to think of it mainly as a mycotoxin mitigation tool?
[Dr. Arnau Vidal] There is no doubt that mycotoxins present one of the biggest issues in modern animal farming. Recent evidence suggests that even low levels of multiple mycotoxins, under long-term field exposure, can impact the animal performance and health. This synergistic, negative impact is exacerbated when combined with the other stress factors typically seen in real farming production as mentioned above (climatic conditions, stock density, poor quality of feed, low level of infections etc.)
However, if we focus solely on mycotoxin risks in isolation, we fail to see the bigger picture. For example, the cumulative impact of the long-term exposure to several mycotoxins (even at a low level) on the same farm may be completely different between winter and summer. Therefore, we need comprehensive technologies which can help the animal combat several stress factors at the same time as a concomitant mycotoxin exposure, even if the latter is considered low. And, of course, the efficacy of such comprehensive technologies, with multiple modes of action, needs to be proven in vivo and in the field.
As such, Escent® S is a pioneering technology that helps animals cope with both abiotic and biotic stressors via a multifaceted, holistic approach. In vivo data back-up the five modes of action of Escent® S: 1) Prevention against oxidative stress, 2) Support of the liver and kidney functions, 3) Stimulation of the animal’s immunity, 4) Triggering biotransformation processes within the liver and detoxification and 5) Adsorption and binding of polar (water soluble) toxins.
[Feedinfo] Can you explain the different tiers of the RISE® platform?
[Ben Letor] RISE® follows a three-tier strategy to mitigate mycotoxin-related stress and improve animal performance and health: Risk, Impact and StratEgy.
Risk: comprehensive assessment by measuring the true mycotoxin risk to your own animals, analysing mycotoxins both in feed and blood in a simple and easy manner.
Impact: evaluating the direct effect of mycotoxins by correlating the measurements in feed and blood with animal performance and health.
StratEgy: optimizing the mitigation approach by proceeding to a fully informed decision for the correct application of our premium detoxifying and stress relief technology, Escent® S.
What that effectively means is that, for the first time, the producer can quantify the realistic mycotoxin threat in his own farm in real time and adapt the optimum level of a mitigation technology. And of course, save hundreds of thousands or millions by improving animal performance and health.
[Feedinfo] What are the next steps for the RISE platform, or for Innovad’s mycotoxin strategy more generally?
[Dr. Christos Gougouglias] Innovad® continues its quest to help the industry better understand the true picture when it comes to mycotoxin exposure. Whereas in the beginning Myco-Marker® was targeting 23 different mycotoxin biomarkers, since 2021, we are now screening for 36 mycotoxin biomarkers in the current blood analysis. Innovad is committed to continually improving this service and it is happening in parallel with new discoveries from the mycotoxin biomarker research field. We cannot forget that mycotoxin biomarker analysis is a completely new research field which has exploded in the last 2-3 years. There is still a lot to discover, and it is imperative to partner with leading laboratories such as Ghent University in order to keep up to date with the most recent findings. For this reason, Innovad is continuously improving this cutting-edge technology, even though Myco-Marker® launched a mere year ago.
Also, as a supportive diagnostic tool, Myco-Marker® has already shown correlations between certain clinical symptoms (such as necrotic enteritis in poultry species and reproductive problems in swine) and exposure to specific mycotoxins. But we also want to support the application of Myco-Marker® as a biomonitoring tool. As such, Myco-Marker® enables the evaluation of animal performance reduction under low mycotoxin exposure, even when animals do not show any clinical symptoms. The generated biomonitoring data help the producer quantify the relevant economic impact. In other words, there is very clearly a benefit to be gained from the use of the RISE® platform outside of situations where animals are actively and demonstrably sick, because it can help the farm’s bottom line to address subclinical mycotoxin stressors.
In fact, we are taking things a step further, applying big data concepts with the aim of identifying a correlation between mycotoxins levels in feed and in blood on the one hand, and the true impact of mycotoxins in animals on the other hand. By recording all these elements, we are building a database that could help us pull out meaningful trends and even anticipate the presence of clinical symptoms or a reduction in the animal performance via continuous, long-term biomonitoring data.
At the same time, Innovad is also continually trying to improve its mitigation technologies. We are currently developing technologies which could provide precise solutions under specific situations of elevated stress, i.e. those caused by a specific stress factor. Such technologies will help to give an improved response for each type of environment and better promote animal performance and health. So, let us all rise to the challenge of mycotoxins.
Published in association with Innovad
