Animal Nutrition Conference of Canada 2024

Dr. Ermias Kebreab, University of California, Davis

Livestock production plays a vital role in ensuring global food security by providing essential nutrients. However, it also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, with the main sources being feed production, enteric emissions (related to digestion), manure storage and application, and the energy used for various farm activities. To substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions within these categories, various mitigation strategies can be implemented.
 
In feed production, adopting sustainable practices such as no-till farming, cover cropping, and improved nitrogen application methods can lead to significant emissions reductions. There are several options for reducing enteric methane emissions, including the use of inhibitors like 3NOP and bromoform-containing macroalgae, as well as rumen modifiers like tannins, nitrate, and certain essential oils.
 
Concerning manure management, employing anaerobic digesters and alternative manure treatment techniques can substantially reduce emissions. Additionally, implementing strategies like same-day incorporation of manure can help minimize nitrogen emissions into the air. Finally, transitioning to renewable energy sources for farm activities such as cooling, heating, and heavy machinery operation can further contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the livestock production sector.
 
While implementing all the mentioned strategies will result in a substantial reduction, it’s important to note that complete elimination of emissions may not be achievable. Therefore, the journey towards achieving net-zero emissions in livestock production is not only essential for mitigating the impact of this industry on the environment but also for ensuring a sustainable and resilient global food system.
 
Keywords: livestock, net-zero, greenhouse gases.

Dr. Neil Ferguson, Trouw Nutrition

Within the livestock industry, sustainability is a relatively new and emerging field driven by pressure from climate change, policy making, carbon tax and sustainable financial investing. However, the realities of implementing any meaningful improvements in sustainable pig production are challenging because of the many uncertainties around the assumptions and predictions of emissions, differences in global standard methodologies, constantly evolving new scientific insights and improved databases used within Life Cycle  Assessments (LCA). Nevertheless, there are still large opportunities to implement nutritional solutions and farm management practices that can significantly reduce a farm’s environmental footprint. To help facilitate these sustainability improvements at the pig farm level, a holistic digital twin approach is proposed that integrates  animal biology, stochasticity, feed formulation, and LCA to simulate the system interactions and predict the various environmental impact categories (carbon dioxide equivalents, acidification, eutrophication, water scarcity, land use, and non-renewable energy resource use).
 
Keywords: pig, sustainability, LCA, carbon footprint, model.

Dr. Carlyn Peterson, Selko USA

Dairy cattle, and agriculture in general, have been wrongly targeted as the scapegoat for the sustainability movement. In reality, the dairy sector has made more major improvements than any other industry. The objective of these proceedings is to highlight the application of sustainability strategies in the dairy industry, including improvements to all three pillars of sustainability: the society, environment, and economy. Dairy directly strengthens society through supplying a safe and nutritious product that benefits human health by providing protein, calcium, and B and D vitamins. The dairy industry has also created programs to educate and promote development of communities, both those involved with and removed from our dairies. Dairy bolsters the US economy by providing more than 3 million jobs and generating over $42 billion in direct wages (IDFA 2024). The US dairy herd is incredibly efficient; while having the fourth largest herd size, we have the second largest production globally. This enhanced efficiency translates to improved sustainability by producing more with less. In addition, dairy farmers are making direct improvements to their environmental impacts by implementing dietary ingredient changes, reduction in protein fed to animals, feeding low water-use feedstuffs, improving crop production, and implementing feed and manure additives. Dairy will advance the push for sustainability through their continued translation of theory to practice.       
 
Keywords: sustainability, dairy, environment, society, economy.

Dr. Terry Engle, Colorado State University

Interactions between trace minerals and beef cattle production are extremely complex. Many factors can affect an animal’s response to trace mineral supplementation such as the duration and concentration of trace mineral supplementation, physiological status of an animal, the absence or presence of dietary antagonists, environmental factors, breed differences, and stress. Furthermore, the role that trace minerals play in rumen microbial fermentation is not well understood. In vitro and in vivo data suggest that practical diets fed to ruminants without trace mineral supplementation can meet the microbial Cu and Zn requirements. Therefore, rumen solubility of supplemental Cu and Zn can impact rumen microbial fermentation characteristics. Earlier in vitro research has indicated that high soluble concentrations of Cu and Zn in the rumen can decrease fiber digestion. Recent in vivo experiments replacing sulfate trace minerals (STM) with OHCl trace minerals (HTM) that are relatively insoluble in the rumen environment, reported improved NDF digestibility in lactating dairy cows and beef steers fed either a grass hay diet or a corn silage-based diet. STM sources of Cu and Zn that are highly soluble in the rumen can reduce total VFA concentrations and can become more tightly bound to rumen solid digesta than HTM sources of Cu and Zn. Organic forms of Cu and Zn may also affect fiber digestibility differently than sulfate forms. Future research investigating the flow and passage rate of different trace mineral sources through the digestive tract and absorption efficiency of Cu and Zn from different TM sources is needed.
 
Keywords: Copper, zinc, source, binding, solubility.

Dr. Gavin Boerboom, Trouw Nutrition

Animal production faces serious challenges, having to feed a growing population while dealing with increased competition for land, climate change and having to take a more sustainable approach. Sustainable agriculture requires us to meet society’s present needs without compromising the ability for current, or future generations, to meet their needs. The effectiveness by which an animal is capable to transform feed biomass into animal products determines the amount of feed, as well as most emissions coming from animal production. The strategy applied for trace mineral feeding can play an important role here, as trace minerals are essential to ensure proper animal health and productivity. Their requirements however are not static, and depend on many different environmental and physiological factors, making it difficult to ensure sufficient minerals are fed. Feeding a higher quality source of trace minerals can ensure that animal requirements are more likely to be met, performance is guaranteed and feed/premix stability is improved. Feeding hydroxy trace minerals (Selko® IntelliBond®) can improve animal performance and bottom-line results. The minerals are covalently bonded and present in a defined crystalline structure, giving it lower reactivity in feeds while increasing availability to the animal. This leads to an improvement in animal growth and feed efficiency, allowing for more output with the same input. Most recently, an independently verified CO2eq value was completed, allowing for accurate assessment of total CO2eq values within complete feed. For dairy, IntelliBond has been independently verified to assist with the reduction of cow’s carbon footprint by improving productivity.

Keywords: Sustainability, minerals, IntelliBond, Optimin.

Aaron Hanson, GlobalData

On top of changing dietary patterns as the world grows richer, agricultural markets are being impacted by a new wave of biofuels mandates and targets aimed at mitigating climate change.  Although cereals are part of this, the main expected impact will be on demand for vegetable oils.  Due to regulations constraining the ability of palm to meet the new vegetable oil demand, the sector is likely to fall back on the oilseeds, especially soybeans.  The large volumes of protein meal generated as by-products of this oil demand will in turn alter feed ration practices in the livestock industry.
 
Keywords: Biofuels, animal feed, oilseeds.

Dr. Jim House, University of Manitoba

The provision of adequate quantities of protein and amino acids in the diets of both livestock and humans is critical for optimal growth, health and performance.  As such, the quality of dietary proteins is an important consideration. Two key components that define the nutritional quality of dietary proteins, including plant-based proteins, are the respective amino acid profiles and the extent to which the protein is digested, absorbed and utilized to meet the needs of the consumer. For plant proteins in particular, numerous factors are known to influence both parameters. The amino acid composition of food and feed ingredients is influenced by the crop and varietal differences within a crop (genetic effect). Furthermore, agronomic and environmental factors, including soil type and fertility, heat units, and moisture can influence the amino acid content of important protein crops. Finally, processing of the crops, including milling strategies, thermal and non-thermal processing steps can influence the content of amino acids. The same factors can also influence the overall digestibility/availability of the amino acids. Novel strategies, including the use of new spectroscopic methods, are available to assess the impact of the above factors on the amino acid content of crops. The latter can replace expensive and time-consuming traditional wet chemistry methods for amino acid analysis and offer new tools for plant breeders and nutritionists to assess the quality of dietary proteins.  Additionally, new in vitro methods have been standardized to assess protein and amino acid digestibility and provide additional tools for nutritionists for protein characterization. The availability of these tools will assist in ensuring that we can continue to provide high quality protein sources for both livestock and human diets.

Keywords: protein quality, amino acids, digestibility, variability.

Dr. Mike von Massow, University of Guelph

Recent years have seen significant changes in the food consumer landscape with supply chain disruptions, generational inflation, and significant new technologies among other things. This presentation will provide perspectives on the changes in consumer demand brought on by these factors and what they mean for animal agriculture. We continue to evaluate supply chain resilience and the implications for a consistent food supply. While trust in agricultural production is strong (particularly for producers), it is clear that the public does not have a detailed understanding of how their food is produced. This gap creates risk which provides an imperative for engagement. There has been some short-term adjustment in consumer preferences driven largely by higher prices, but these are not expected to be permanent. Technologies such as gene-editing and cellular agriculture also have the potential to disrupt the market. Despite all of these factors, animal agriculture will continue to be a key factor in providing protein requirements and food security in Canada and across the world.
 
Keywords: food, food prices, technology, protein, consumers.

Dr. Maurice Doyon, Université Laval

The presentation focuses on traditional animal protein and its substitutes, from a consumer point of view. After an overview of the motivations behind the choice of proteins, we will assess the situation before describing what I call the protein war. This conference addresses these trends in the perspective of initiating a reflection on the issue.

Keywords: Proteins, animal, plant, laboratory protein, molecular agriculture.

Enjoy an evening of food, drink and networking. Visit the Industry Partner Showcase and Graduate Student Poster Exhibition.