Doing this successfully requires an efficient and healthy gut. During VIV Asia, a one day technical conference on Pig Gut Health was held, where experts from around the world discussed how this can be achieved.

Dr. Tim Goossens, Business Development Manager Digestive Performance with Nutriad, was one of the speakers.

Several topics were covered, including vaccination against PED, immune function, microbial activity and probiotics. “The feedback from the audience was excellent”, stated Alex Eggen, the chairman of the conference. “The attendees especially liked the variety in subjects that were brought forward; the topics were distinct, but also all interrelated”.

Dr. Goossens presented a talk entitled “Improving gut performance in health and disease: the challenge to develop a broad-spectrum feed additive”. In his presentation, he addressed his view on the challenges that producers of gut health promoting additives are facing.

More specifically, he discussed how livestock producers became more familiar with these type of additives, and how they tend to try to identify “the best one”, often to be used as an alternative for AGPs (Antimicrobial Growth Promoters).

Tim Goossens explained: “By now, it is clear that many active ingredients can be linked to gut health. But to develop a product that is just a robust as AGPs, their potential needs to be maximized”. He talked about butyrate as an example. “Butyrate has the potential to trigger several physiological responses that are beneficial for gut health and performance. But that potential will only be met, if you invest in a coating that can deliver butyrate throughout the entire digestive tract, as we do for our ADIMIX®Precision”.

He advocated that optimizing the effectiveness of active ingredients is crucial to meet the customer’s expectations about alternative growth promoters. “Only when their effectiveness is enhanced, active compounds that promote gut health will be able to match the robustness of AGP’s. That is, being able to offer benefits for livestock producers, no matter whether they are raising animals in optimal conditions, or whether their animals are facing intestinal challenges”, he argued.

Nutriad delivers products and services for livestock and aquaculture producers to over 80 countries, through a network of own sales offices and distributors. Supported by 4 application laboratories and 5 manufacturing facilities on 3 continents. Find out more at www.nutriad.com