Kemin, a nutritional ingredient manufacturer, recognises the importance of food safety in the modern animal production industry. Its revolutionalised concept called "Total Nutrition" sets to address the problem starting with the safety of feed raw materials and of stored feed to the overall nutrition of livestock.  In the following interview, Dr Liong Kah Heng, the Marketing Director of Kemin Industries (Asia) Pte Ltd, discusses some of the critical issues affecting the industry and the company's role in it.

 

 

There are several major issues that warrant our concerns. The problem of "animal stress" invariably tops the list. Animal producers, whose main priority is to maximise animal performance, are at risk of jeopardising animals' health by overfeeding them with high-density diet in order to boost body weight and speed growth within the shortest time possible. Over-consumption causes stress on the metabolism and immunity systems of these rapidly growing animals.

Secondly, feed safety and quality pose a formidable challenge, particularly during recent times when the wide use of antibiotics in animal feed has raised consumer concerns about its possible ill effects on human health. Environment issues also play a role as all-year high humidity, especially in the Southeast Asian countries, facilitates breeding of moulds and bacteria, leading to unsafe and deteriorated feed quality. Last but not the least, environmentalists worldwide have been harping on the issue of sustainability - what we could do to reduce environmental impact while ensuring long-term animal production remains a huge challenge.

 

We believe the safety of food from animal origin begins with safe animal feeds, which was how we came up with the concept of "Total Nutrition." The overall objective is to reduce stress on the animal primarily by improving feed utilisation, in other words; we are feeding animals for growth and health, which in turn yield quality production and safe food for human consumption.

 

First of all, Total Nutrition aims to achieve nutrient maximisation by enabling feed to become functional in its nature and thereby confer health benefits on the animal consuming it. By combining protein utilisation from Total Vegetable Diets and the use of enzymes including lysophospholipids and organic acids, we formulated lower density feeds that enhance nutrients absorption while reducing oxidative and metabolic stresses seen in commercialised intensive feedings.

To reduce the reliance on antibiotics, we offer feed ingredients that incorporate various organic acid nutricines e.g. probiotics as an alternative for reducing gastrointestinal diseases and improving gut health in livestock.

Feed can also be a source of stress for animals in paving a potential route for pathogens and mycotoxins if not properly handled. Our specialised feed ingredients ranging from mould inhibitor, acidifiers to toxin binders help prevent microbial spoilage of feeds, thus significantly cutting animals' microorganism intake and leading to safer animal products.

Total Nutrition's strategy of incorporating health maintenance, disease avoidance and general nutrition into essential feed requirements will help improve current animal production in a way that is both safer for human consumption and more sustainable to the environment.

 

What is Kemin's best technique in helping deal with issues of food safety?

From our end, we can address issues on food safety through offering antibiotic replacements to bypass antibiotic residue issues. Also for mycotoxin contamination, it will be kept inside the animal's body then passed on to the consumer, instead of going to the animal waste. With our mycotoxin binders, we conducted tests to show that our products attain 80% mycotoxin recovery. Therefore mycotoxin will simply be washed off to go with the animal waste instead of staying inside the animal and being passed on to end-users.

 

What is your viewpoint on antibiotics usage, particularly in Asia?

It's all about the comfort zone of the consumers/ farmers as they have been using it for the past 20-50 years. If today you ask them to withdraw from antibiotics; you're asking them to move out from their comfort zone, so you will encounter a lot of resistance.

What we can do from our end is we educate consumers to replace antibiotics - to show data, convince them to probiotics - and this might take awhile. We don't have the right to tell them to stop using antibiotics but make them understand. Externally, I do see regulations become tighter, particularly in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and in countries that exporter to the EU -  there's a strong drive to reduce antibiotic use. If you tell the market before to replace AGPs, you would get a "no way" answer, now the market is not so resistant.

One other thing to consider in Asia is the purchasing power of the consumers. EU already has enough for its basic needs. The consumers already have purchasing power.  If we ask the Asian market, do we have enough cheap food to supply in the region? The answer is no. So for Asian market, we should strike a balance of food affordability and food safety.

If people don't have enough food to eat, then the priority seems less on food safety. So we need to strike a balance between the two. This is a challenge to the farming industry.

 

We will definitely continue our expansion - particularly strengthen our sales force in all markets we are present in. We will also come up with more and more new products and there are still some technologies we are working on. We will always understand every product until the molecular level - so we find proof in the lab first, then proof in the animal before we introduce them to the market. Understanding every key component of our product down to the molecular level would always guide us along.