Rising vitamin E prices and supply issues have provided a challenge to many within the feed sector who are already contending with volatile ingredient costs. For procurement and formulation specialists, identifying and sourcing tried and tested alternatives can be difficult.
In today’s Industry Perspectives, we talk to Dr Anne-Sophie Valable, who is Product Manager and Dr Paul Engler, Product R&D Manager at Nor-Feed, the botanical additives specialist which is part of Adisseo.
Dr Valable and Dr Engler discuss the current situation with vitamin E, and talk in-depth about the company’s Nor-Grape® range, which Nor-Feed has researched and trialled extensively as a cost-effective substitute for vitamin E.
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[Feedinfo] You have been following developments in the vitamin E market closely for the last few months. Can you talk us through your understanding of the situation, and why you are so interested in this? [Dr Anne-Sophie Valable] The price of vitamin E has been subject to steady and rapid rise in recent months. For vitamin E 50, the Feedinfo quotation has risen from €6.6/kg to €10/kg between January and the 6th of August. |
Dr Anne-Sophie Valable, Product Manager, Nor-Feed |
This steady increase is due to a reduced focus on the feed market by certain vitamin producers, and some of them not renewing certain raw material supply contracts.
Vitamin prices in general have been low in recent years, and it is not surprising that prices are going up, especially vitamin E which is a together with vitamin A, for its manufacturers. This August, prices are skyrocketing, with one of the last Feedinfo quotations at €17-21/kg (updated 20 August 2024).
This is a critical situation for the industry, with direct impacts on animal feed prices. Prices are unlikely to fall soon due to the structural reasons behind this inflation. However, we believe a solution exists to optimise the cost of vitamin E in feed. Our product Nor-Grape® represents potentially significant savings in this inflationary period. For a feedmill consuming 200t of vitamin E50, using Nor-Grape 80 to substitute 50% of it, in the limits of the NRC recommendations, represents a saving of €1M or more.
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[Feedinfo] Can you explain how your product provides an alternative to vitamin E? [Dr Paul Engler] Alongside its function as a vitamin, vitamin E, or α-tocopherol, exerts physiological antioxidant properties in animals. Polyphenols hold a unique place in animal production due to the benefit of diversifying physiological antioxidant sources in the ration, and were once called vitamin P. |
Dr Paul Engler, Product R&D Manager, Nor-Feed |
Polyphenols are naturally found in plants such as tea, herbs and fruits, and in grapes, the most studied source. While there are various plant sources of polyphenols, grapes remain the most interesting as they contain the highest antioxidant properties in vivo and a high content in bioavailable polyphenols.
[Feedinfo] As this is a plant-based product, how do you ensure it is consistent?
[Dr Paul Engler] Corn, wheat or soy are the basis of feed formula worldwide. Any experienced nutritionist will regularly assess their composition and update their matrix while formulating to ensure the quality of feed meets animals’ needs. These raw materials are also plant-based, so why should we consider plant extracts differently? Following this reasoning, Nor-Feed has decided to use a strong evidence-based approach to develop products for the animal feed market based on pharmacognosy. This field of expertise is dedicated to the study of the activity of plant natural metabolites.
Polyphenols are good candidates to substitute a proportion of vitamin E in feed and will help to optimise ration costs. However, due to their natural origin, huge variability exists in term of quality between sources. For instance, in grapes, four main factors can impact polyphenol quantity and quality in the final product: plant cultivar, climate, plant part and extraction method. These factors play a vital role in determining the chemical nature and size of polyphenols, which directly affects their bioavailability. This means it is crucial to properly select and characterise the polyphenol content of grape extracts.
With proper characterisation, it is possible to standardise one solution in the manufacturing process. This standardisation ensures that the selected polyphenols will be found in the desired precise amounts, batch after batch, and so guarantees sustained performance and viability of the vitamin E equivalence over time. In other words, we get the best of nature and remove its variability to ensure consistency and reliability.
However, the initial selection of the best candidate must be done via in vivo trials. The antioxidant system is indeed very complex within cells and in vitro studies, only studying the action of a product to neutralise one specific type of free radicals, can only reflect a small part of the actual action of antioxidant candidate. As the USDA indicated back in 2012, basing a decision solely on this type of evidence could be very deceiving once in vivo. In addition, to be effective, antioxidants must be bioavailable and absorbed in the gut. All this combined leads to the necessity of using in vivo trials to efficiently and effectively assess the real effect of polyphenols on the animal, which is what we have been doing at Nor-Feed for more than 20 years now.
All our dedicated research has shown that the rigorously selected grape polyphenols present in 1mg of Nor-Grape® provide physiological antioxidant activity equivalent to that of 11IU of vitamin E, the highest equivalence on the market. Many formulators and buyers refer to vitamin E50; the equivalence ratio in this case is 22:1 .
[Feedinfo] Do you have independent trial results to back this up, and what do they show?
[Dr Anne-Sophie Valable] As explained before, the antioxidant activity of polyphenols should be judged with livestock studies. The parallel is true to develop an equivalence between polyphenols and Vitamin E antioxidant properties. Nor-Grape® equivalence ratio is based on a meta-analysis of 20 trials.
In addition, we have conducted more than 100 trials on this solution along with a doctoral thesis by Dr Paul Engler. It is the most documented solution for Vitamin E cost optimisation and has been recognised by the EU feed additive authorization, 2b485 by the European Commission. The Nor-Feed Dry Grape Extracts dossier is the only grape extract dossier that has been approved by the EU.
[Feedinfo] How can feed mills use this product, and what are the potential savings? Are there barriers to feed mills using it at present, and how do you plan to overcome these?
[Dr Anne-Sophie Valable] Nor-Grape® is a feed additive to be added directly into the final product (feeds, minerals, milk replacers) or through the premix. As polyphenols are degraded in the rumen, we offer a dedicated rumen-protected version to ensure product efficacy in ruminants.
If we take the example of an integrator with 50 million broilers, the economic gain of substituting 50% of the vitamin E content with Nor-Grape® can be up to €460,000 , close to 60% of the vitamin E cost for this operator, with the current price at €16/kg of Vitamin E50. This gain can be easily and rapidly assessed by the feed mills in their own context, thanks to our e-calculator.
At Nor-Feed, we know that optimising vitamin E cost is a priority in this inflationary context but also that replacing vitamin E in feed is not undertaken lightly. To support this modification of formula specifications, we provide a labelling guide for customers, explaining how this equivalence can be highlighted on the label for end-user understanding.
