Feed Bussiness Worldwide: September, 2013
A customised, multipolar approach to animal health
Probiotics and organic acids, plant extracts and vaccines: Natural methods of raising animals are on the way but intensive livestock production is here to stay.
by Eric J. BROOKS
At a time of scarce feed supplies, a wide range of economic and legal issues are coinciding with groundbreaking animal health discoveries.
According to a new study by MarketsandMarkets, feed additives and animal health supplement makers earned revenues of $15.6 billion in 2011. With the industry expanding at a 3.8% annual rate in the five years from 2012 onwards, it is expected to exceed US$19.5 billion in revenues in 2017. - And this figure does not even include the rapidly growing vaccines sector, or frontiers like Quorum Sensing Inhibitors, the latter being too new to be given its own separate category within the wider supplements sector.
The sector’s expansion is being powered by more than a search for alternatives to antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs): Livestock diseases profoundly waste resources that are invested in animals that fall sick before they can reach maturity. Improving animal health and mitigating disease outbreaks frees up these otherwise wasted feed inputs, enabling unit livestock production costs to fall while boosting output.
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