View From Europe
By Colin Ley
Good bugs rule in post-antibiotics era Rising concerns about antibiotic resistance in humans and animals continue to drive feed sector innovation with today’s emphasis very much directed towards the promotion of good bugs over bad. This contrasts with previous eras when broad-spectrum antibiotics
were used preventatively to create a livestock production environment free from ‘background noise’, as one feed researcher described it to me recently. Just as the European Union’s banning of antibiotics for use as
growth promoters in animal feed in 2006 challenged farmers and feed producers to find a new way forward, so today’s pressure to reduce antibiotic usage for all but essential health and welfare reasons is once again forcing the industry to explore new areas of performance potential. Much of today’s new product development is centred on the
delivery of high levels of nutritional excellence, designed to enable the animals concerned to fight infections from the strongest possible health base. In this context, it was enlightening to attend F&A Next, an agri-
innovation event run by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in The Netherlands which was staged with the aim of connecting agribusiness start-ups with farm sector investors who might just be persuaded to back their products and development ideas. F&A’s two-day programme also included the final of Nutreco’s
2018 Feed Tech Challenge, focusing on the 10 best proposals selected by the company from an impressive starting entry of 52 extremely innovative contenders. Sharing the final with proposals on how to rid salmon farming
of sea lice alongside the prospect of creating a poultry industry robot called ChickenBoy, Feed Tech’s top 10 list featured two strong feed sector ideas which are geared to help farmers reduce their dependence on antibiotics.
Feed additives designed to kill harmful bacteria One of these, an appealing feed additive from Canada-based Cytophage Technologies, duly secured the top prize, qualifying for an extended product validation process under the guidance of Nutreco who will make one of its Dutch research farms available to host the necessary trials. The Cytophage development consists of a synthetic cocktail
of bacteriophages, created to prevent and treat infections like campylobacter, salmonella and
E.coli. The company is targeting the poultry industry with its first bacteriophage additive, followed as soon
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as possible thereafter by feed additives for use across other farmed species. Bacteriophages, which are found everywhere in nature, are
basically viruses that kill bacteria. They work by attaching themselves to a targeted harmful bacteria, into which they insert their genetic information. After destroying their host they move on to kill more bacteria elsewhere. As such, bacteriophages present a fresh approach to preventing or treating bacterial infections, hopefully enabling farmers to tackle livestock infections without the need to use antibiotics. The trick, of course, is to find the right bacteriophage in nature
to deal with the harmful bacteria you’ve identified in chickens, pigs or whichever other species is being farmed. In their natural state, phages have an estimated bacteria kill rate
of around 60%. The ‘superior’ phages which have been discovered and developed by Cytophage, however, are claimed to have a kill rate of 100%. They can also be selected to address specific infection issues, such as
E.coli, and are more predictable in their impact than the phages which are found in nature. This is due to the Canadian company’s creation of tailor-made
combinations of natural and genetically modified bacteriophages that target and destroy selected bacterial organisms, whether they happen to be in humans, animals or agricultural crops. Cytophage CEO, Steven Theriault, told the Feed Tech judging
panel that his company’s synthetic product is ready to go to market, having already advanced through ten years of painstaking development to reach its present stage. When I spoke to him in the aftermath of his Challenge win, Mr
Theriault was understandably upbeat at the prospect of realising his market ambitions by working with Nutreco to prove his product’s efficacy.
“This win will allow us to move onto the world stage,” he said,
before outlining a plan which will see the company’s poultry feed additive being ready for sale as early as next year, with follow-on products for pigs, ruminants and fish arriving at the rate of about one every 12 months thereafter.
Tricking harmful bacteria into suicide Also enjoying his visit to F&A Next was Edward Fuchs, CEO of Folium Science, who secured a joint runner-up position in the Feed Tech Challenge with another in-feed solution to antimicrobial resistance. The Cambridge, UK, business has developed a CRISPR (Clustered
Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology which precisely kills bacteria, according to Mr Fuchs, basically tricking harmful bacteria into ‘committing suicide’ by harnessing the naturally occurring CAS enzyme. “It really is as simple as that,” he told the Feed Tech judging panel, adding that results to date showed very effective kill rates. “We’ve already run trials in relation to MRSA and
E.coli and
are now moving into tests on salmonella, for which we’ve designed a product which will be capable of hitting 98% of all pathogenic salmonella.”
Comment section is sponsored by Compound Feed Engineering Ltd
www.cfegroup.com
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