November 11, 2009

Delacon's Performing Nature Symposium and the phytogenic world

 

The Performing Nature Symposium was successfully held on November 4-8, 2009 on the Greece island of Crete, where Delacon gathered 250 people from more than 25 countries.

In these two days, 18 speakers held lectures on the following topics: Trends in animal production and nutrition, immunity and environment.

Helmut Dedl, president and CEO, officially opened the symposium and gave a short overview on the 25 years history of the company. This was followed by a presentation on the future strategies of Delacon by Andreas Asamer, director of marketing and sales. Further, Dr. John Hodges presented his thoughts about boundaries in animal production. He was pointing out that there is the need for a plan B in animal production. "I think GM crops are not the silver bullet, relying on them to feed the world is too tricky," said Hodges.

The impact of this critical point of view was big and immediate, as most of the following speakers were referring to Hodges' thoughts in their own presentations.

All in all, the symposium was able to generate multiple insights from distinguished speakers. Some of them include Dr. Dennis DiPietre from the US who was reporting on reducing variance and lowering the average final weight of slaughter hogs in order to raise profitability. According to Dr. DiPietre, most of the farmers are working with averages of groups which are hiding a lot of information. Shifting the individuals back to the center of interest is a way how precision farming could come to pig production.

Dr. Jan Dirk van der Klis from Schothorst Feed Research in the Netherlands talked about several challenges the European poultry market is facing or will face in the near future. He mentioned on the EU welfare directive for broilers (effective 2010) and the EU welfare directive for layers (effective 2012). These new rules make maximum stocking density and NH3 output important criteria.

"Animal nutritionists therefore have an important role in optimising poultry diets and improving the competitiveness of European poultry production despite these regulations," said Van der Klis. He also mentioned that since the EU ban on antimicrobial growth promoters (2006), the production of broilers and turkeys decreased due to an increase of intestinal disorders.

To overcome this, Prof Dr. Wilhelm Windisch gave an overview on alternatives to AGP's where he mentioned organic acids, probiotics, phytogenics, enzymes, functional fibers and heavy metals as the current options. Windisch clearly pointed out that heavy metals would work well but for their negative impact on the environment cannot be seen as practical alternatives.

On the second day, the delegates could choose between two parallel sessions. Dr. Ortwin Simon opened the session on nutrition with a speech about nutrient digestibility with phytogenics. He presented a series of metabolism trials carried out with Biostrong 510 and several other active agents.

Meanwhile, the session on immunity was started by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zentek, who gave insights on how the immune system works and how nutritional factors are influencing it. Furthermore he provided information on how phytogenic influence the immune system.