Jakarta stop of BIOMIN's ANF: Challenge, Opportunity, Success from the producer to consumer

 

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True to the tradition of the strong local flavour of BIOMIN events, the Jakarta edition of the company's Asia Nutrition Forum (ANF) this year was successfully held from October 22-24.

Day 1

 

Before the commencement of the evening's welcome dinner, customers, business partners and other invited guests of BIOMIN were ushered into Museum Bank Indonesia for a tour of the history of its founding entity - Bank Indonesia.

Coincidentally, as Jan Vanbrabant, Asia Pacific CEO of BIOMIN, revealed in his opening speech, both the parents of the current managing director of BIOMIN Indonesia used to work for Bank Indonesia, which was testament to the special relationship between the Bank and BIOMIN!

 

Vanbrabant also said that this year's ANF will have seven stops in various Asian countries (Japan, Korea, China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia), and BIOMIN expects to break its record with a total of 1,500 participants. This is also the first time that the Forum will stop over in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As the company's World Nutrition Forum is held only every two years, the ANF aims to open up more opportunities for interested participants.

 

 

Starting off the forum proper, Erich Erber, founder of ERBER Group which BIOMIN is part of, gave his opening speech on the background of BIOMIN and its latest developments.

 

This was followed by a keynote speech "Current and future global trends on consumption of animal protein" by Professor David Hughes, Emeritus Professor of Food Marketing at Imperial College London. As many in the industry would agree, industrially-produced chicken would face rising competition from industrially-produced fish in international meat markets. Price competition will be best avoided by differentiating and adding value to meat products such as to distance them from unstable and lower-priced meat commodity markets, Prof. Hughes said. Some industry players are already leading this initiative as consumers are increasingly seeking holistic 'values' for food products such as ethics, sustainability, provenance and heritage, beyond just making price or 'value-for-money' considerations.

 

In his speech "Brand marketing: Challenge, opportunity, success", Professor Hansel D'Souza of S P Jain School of Global Management agreed with the importance of target marketing and adding value to meat products. He gave the example of how Perdue today produces more than a billion chicken feet a year for key markets like China, bringing in more than US$40 million of revenue, when chicken feet were valueless about 20 years ago.

 

At the producer end, Michael Block, livebird production manager at Tegel Foods, gave an informative and practical presentation ("Operating at peak performance") on the art and science of poultry production on-farm, from shed cleaning and setting up biosecurity standards to ventilation control and health monitoring. According to Block, there is no substitute for being able to read bird behaviour and make required adjustments, and he will tell a new grower to cover their controller and to make adjustments off what their birds are telling them.

 

As for shrimp production, Dr. Jorge Cuellar-Anjel, project director of Shrimp Pathology and Research at CAMACO Shrimp Company, outlined how global climate change is impacting the shrimp industry worldwide by increasing the susceptibility to diseases ("Challenges, opportunities and success in shrimp health management"). He described how measures such as the development of improved diagnostic tools, and the implementation of tighter biosecurity and best management practices should be considered for successful shrimp farming.

 

For his presentation on swine production ("Formulating for optimal gut health and performance in swine"), Tony Edwards, pig nutrition and production consultant at ACE Livestock Consulting, emphasised how optimum gut health is synonymous with good performance in swine. For example, he explained how the undesirable aspect of feed complications for swine can be countered with appropriate feed additives such as acids, enzymes and phytogenics. Edwards further cited the example of how a phytogenic product like BIOMIN's Digestarom® has been shown in field trials to improve the performance of sows and finisher pigs.

 

The Jakarta edition of the Asia Nutrition Forum would be incomplete without some discussion on mycotoxin management, the mainstay of BIOMIN forums. This was the topic of focus for the presentation "Dietary mycotoxins: Prevalance and consequences for poultry and pigs" by Professor Julian Wiseman, Professor of Animal Production at the University of Nottingham.

 

Professor Charles Rangga Tabbu of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Gadjah Mada University also gave a very graphic and practical presentation "Problems and the most common clinical and pathological lesions of mycotoxicosis in poultry", which he described clinical signs and pathological lesions of toxicosis due to the mycotoxins aflatoxins, trichothecenes, ochratoxin, fumonisins and zearalenone.

 

The forum proper was wrapped up with a very frank panel discussion involving all speakers taking questions from the floor. For Dr. Cuellar-Anjel, he replied to a question from an Indonesian shrimp farmer that a definite cause of white faeces syndrome has to date not been established, but may be a result of parasitic or bacterial infection rather than mycotoxicosis.

 

Following the panel discussion, a gala dinner was held at JS Luwansa Hotel and Convention Center, with a representative from the Indonesian ministry of agriculture gracing the event and giving a speech.