Strategies to cope with mycotoxins in animal production
Published:July 11, 2022
Siska Croubels (Ghent University) speaks on the negative impact of mycotoxins and the different and complementary solutions that are needed to fight it, during IPVS2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
I think that probiotics is one of the good approaches that will restrict the bioavailability of mycotoxins in animals gut. There are several reports stated that probiotics could be the best strategy to remove mycotoxins by binding mechanisms, particularly cell wall components of lactic acid bacteria involve in the binding and also it improves the growth performance of animals.
For poultry, I have formulated two mycotoxin binders to manage mycotoxicosis in poultry. Presently, I am working on management of mycotoxicosis in ruminants primarily reduction of mycotoxin excretion in milk.
It is an interesting idea to fight with probiotics against mycotoxins in the feed. It is without a doubt that probiotics have general beneficial effects on the whole body, as they have immune strengthening effects. It is also a scientifically accepted fact that polysaccharides found in the wall of microorganisms have mycotoxin adsorbing effects.
It is also known that the effects of mycotoxins depend on the general toxic effects of the mycotoxin, but also on the general status of the body.
When probiotics are mixed in the feed at 10-100 g/t levels, or are fed by other means to the animal, then the general health status of the animal is enhanced, thus the tolerance against toxic compounds is enhanced.
Although it is true, that cell wall of probiotics, just like the cell wall of all microorganisms is composed of polysaccharides, more specifically of glucans and mannans, which can adsorb mycotoxins (depending on the water solubility of the mycotoxins), but the effect is not significant if the usually applied dose is taken into account.
There are a number of known products on the market, that contain microorganism cell wall as adsorption material, but the effective dose of these products is 1-2 kg/t. These products are produced by fragmenting of bacterial or biomass fermentations, which are than fractioned. The cell wall fraction is sold following dehydration. The thus obtained product contain much smaller cell wall parts (thus its surface is much larger and its particle number is much greater than that of the starting product.), than a probiotic containing live bacterial cells. Therefore, on order to achieve the same adsorption effect with a probiotic product, it must be applied in a much higher dosage (5-10 kg/t), which raises economical questions.
Dr. Arpad Bata
Thank you for response, I totally agreed with your statement "Therefore, on order to achieve the same adsorption effect with a probiotic product, it must be applied in a much higher dosage (5-10 kg/t), which raises economical questions". But it depends on the probiotic strain, there are several reports stated that use of single probiotic strain enhance the growth performance, weight gain (about 200 grams) in poultry birds and also minimize in toxic effects of mycotoxins was reported. so that even use of low amount of CFU (5x10^9/kg of feed) results in minimization of toxic effect of mycotoxins and enhance the growth performance of chicken. So, if we have good probiotic strain that will definitely minimize the cost and replace the use of antibiotics in poultry, also minimize the multidrug resistance and so on......
The most critical health and nutrition challenge to livability of stock and livelihood of poultry farmers world wide and particularly in the humid sub Saharan Africa is mycotoxins contamination. Mycotoxins effect in the poultry industry permeates vertically from upstream premium birds through the hatchery to the commercial down strean pullets and broilers. Beside raw materials contamination used for feed formulation is the major source of the introduction of mycotoxin contamination to all categories of poultry that are exposed to feed contamination. Livestock Industry foundation for Africa is currently preaching advocacy on compulsory phytosanitary requirements of evidence of inclusion of broad spectrum toxin binder in all parent stocks that hatched batches of DOC exportable by hatcheries from regions to regions within the sub Saharan Africa. lIFA knowledge sharing on the nutrition and the implication of mycotoxin is supported by Zoetis foundation, and form part of knowledge sharing in Nigeria and currently with poultry farmers in selected six West Africa countries with a broiler population of over 800,000 Tons annual output Why is mycotoxins the core health challenge facing the industry today? Mycotoxins are secondary effects of climate change aftermaths on health and nutrition of livestock including poultry and are so detrimental to sustainable Animal food security most devastating to the countries of the south Sahara Africa. Mitigation strategies that can bind the five major toxins that are a combination of both large and small molecule toxin are most likely required in the heavily challenged tropical countries of the World. For more activities of livestock industry foundation for Africa please visit www.lifango.org or follow our activities at https://blog.lifango.org.
Stephen Adejoro Dr The feed industry should ALSO ask for upstream mycotoxin mitigation strategies along with the binders. Contaminated feeds are also poorer in nutrient contents as compared to uncontaminated ones.
Peetambar Dahal
I would say it is too late when we look the problem in use of binder. For two reasons. One is that contaminated grain besides mycotoxin have also strong shortages in feeding quality, and the second is that it costs much money and the effect is never 100 %. Therefor I prefer prevention, I summarized my thoughts in this respect in DOI: 10.23880/oajvsr-16000197. Of course the we need varieties with a much higher resistance we have now, but this problem can be solved. But my conviction is the toxin binding never solve the problem and every epidemic will prove that no change varieties makes a good profit only for the toxin binding producers. I agree that we should use them as we do not have complete resistance against toxigenic fungi and smaller or larger can be produced where this method is useful. But it is a large difference when from the total yield for example in wheat is 25% (1.5 million t in 2019 in Hungary) above DON limit or only 100 000 t.
Yours sincerely
Akos Mesterhazy.
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