Alltech into animal health top 20
New technology has always been the answer to the challenges which constantly arise in farming, as in any walk of life. Technological solutions to these challenges came from thousands of researchers and scientists who created new knowledge of farm animals and crops through the second half of the 20th century.
Their findings, more than anything else, enabled farmers to hugely increase productivity and profits over the decades.
At least, that was the case. Now, all round the world, famous agricultural research centres have closed, or shifted their focus away from farm output. In Ireland, for example, Teagasc no longer comes up with a large volume of the kind of ground-breaking research with which Moorepark transformed dairy farming here.
And those research centres which still see the farmer as their main "customer" now have a hard time attracting promising graduate students, because fewer and fewer students are likely to come from a farming background, and the best ones are more likely to gravitate toward the computer industry than the farming business.
But not so at Alltech, the company founded by Pearse Lyons in 1980, which owes much of its success to seeking out the top scientists, and turning their research into useful products in the farming world.
There are about 120 research scientists on the Alltech staff, and the company also makes sure the brightest and best of the new recruits are on its payroll, by funding MSc and PhD students around the world, including 38 in Kentucky in the US, where Alltech is headquartered.
Scientists are also working at Alltech Bioscience Centres in Beijing, China and in Dunboyne, Co Meath, on how to remedy farming problems.
Alltech experts work at the molecule and gene level to solve farming problems (one of their most successful products is an extract from the cell wall of a yeast fungus).
Applying the best brains in biology to farming problems has helped to power the company into the international top 20 in animal health. The company aims to continue that trend by opening up new agri-related and food-related research boundaries in new sciences like nutrigenomics.
What are the pressing farming problems around the world which Alltech aims to tackle? According to Pearse Lyons, the overall challenge is to feed a growing world population, while solving the challenges of rising farming costs and inadequate livestock feed ingredient supplies.
All this must be done without the help of in-feed growth promoters (the last of these antibiotics will disappear next year from the EU), while respecting the environment, and while funding is being withdraw from the government and industry research which powered farming productivity ahead for decades.
Lyons visualises that an extra five million tonnes of livestock feed may be needed to satisfy the expanding meat requirements of ever more prosperous consumer populations in the improving Asian economies, like China and India.
In countries like Ireland, he sees a different range of farming problems.
In these western world countries, it's getting harder to nourish the modern super-livestock emerging from decades of remarkable genetic progress. They must be fed adequately to achieve their high production potential, while fulfilling the food consumer's desire for total traceability of the end product, and without the help of animal proteins like meat and bonemeal, condemned by consumers.
When Alltech scientists put the range of world farming problems under the microscope, among those which stood out was the threat of mycotoxins.
Members of the public have rated mycotoxins behind Genetic Modification, pesticides, additives, nutritional errors, and bacteria in a list of human nutrition dangers. However, scientists rate them in third place, behind nutritional errors and bacteria.
Needless to say, the mycotoxins threat to farm animals danger is even greater. Even though the scientific term may be unfamiliar, Irish farmers know the dangers of mycotoxins for their livestock. Every time they dump mouldy silage or concentrate feeds which have gone off, they are protecting their livestock from mycotoxins.
Mould growth on damp or decaying organic matter is dangerous only because it produces poisonous mycotoxins. And in modern intensive farming, which imports animal feeds from around the world, often delivered to intensively farmed livestock as a mixed ration, it is often impossible to detect spoilage in feedstuffs, and mycoctoxins can be exacting a hidden toll.
According to Professor Johanna Fink-Gremmels, University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, 25% of the total income to agriculture in the EU is lost due to mycotoxins.
The figure is even higher in countries where the climate brings high temperatures and humidities. There, the mycotoxins on mouldy products are more widespread, and are a serious public health problem, as well as an endemic problem in livestock production.
It's 30 years since human deaths have been attributed to ergotism a grain mould long since eradicated by farmers, which produces poisonous mycotoxins but ergot poisoning was common in the Europe of the Middle Ages.
Nowadays, alfatoxin is the most feared of the mycotoxins. It is estimated that entry to the EU is barred for more than €580 million of food from Africa per year, because of alfatoxin contamination exceeding permitted EU levels.
In the mid-1990s, when Alltech started examining how they could solve the worldwide mycotoxin problem for farmers, it became clear that even the best agricultural, storage and processing practices cannot completely avoid or eliminate contamination of foods or feedstuffs. In fact, some farmers around the world will knowingly feed a spoiled feedstuff, if the price is right.
Mycotoxin producing fungi are prevalent in growing crops, and during harvest, storage and processing. The problem may be increasing, due to climate change. (The 2004 US maize crop may have a high mycotoxin content, because drying and storage facilities could not handle the bumper yields, and grain spoiled on farms and in grain yards).
The results in livestock are decreased feed intake, increased susceptibility to disease, damage to vital organs, and poor reproductive performance.
Over the years, feed additives have been developed to minimise the damage caused by mycotoxins in livestock. Hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate has been shown to reduce the effect of alfatoxin poisoning. Bentonite clay combats other mycotoxicoses, but only at levels that are not practical in animal feeding.
Alfalfa fibre can reduce the effects of two mycotoxins, but may itself be contaminated with fusarium (a fungus familiar to Irish grain growers).
Since 1998, Alltech investigated how yeast cell wall components can "lock up" mycotoxins, allowing them to pass through the digestive tracts of livestock, without negative effects for the animal, the food consumer or the environment.
Alltech biochemists worked on identifying and determining the three dimensional structures of 50 mycotoxins. Biotechnologists extracted glucan polymers from specially selected yeasts, and modified them to fit with and "lock up" known mycotoxins, and carry them safely out of the digestive systems of livestock.
Five Ph D and eight Masters theses went into investigating the effects of mycotoxins in livestock, and their control with modified yeast cell wall extracts.
The commercial result is Alltech's Mycosorb, launched in 1997 and now the fastest growing product in the company's annual sales of about €250m.
