Ready for the 
post-antibiotics era

By Marie-Laurence Le Ray, 
product manager, Neovia

With an eye on increased  bans on antimicrobial growth promoters (AGP), feedmillers, premixers and farmers have to find  reliable, validated and cost effective solutions. Moreover, alternative products must act differently from AGP in order not to develop the same resistance mechanisms and thus the same threats for human health. With the aim to replace AGP efficiently, B-Safe was developed 10 years ago, having been backed by many years of in-vitro and in-vivo research and field trials. It has an activated copper linked to a synthetic and specific clay. This “couple copper-clay” enables properties of gut flora modulation and positive action on intestinal villosities.

Trials with poultry
The product for poultry has been tested 21 times under field conditions (challenge) and 15 times in a good sanitary condition (no challenge). The results (Figure 1 – see attached pdf) proved higher zoo-technical performance i.e. growth and feed conversion results in 76% of all cases. A consistency of results was observed: one can expect an improved performance in three cases out of four when using the alternative product to AGP. The result is similar to those with AGP which also did not reach 100% improvement, which can be well qualified as an alternative growth promoter for the
antimicrobial counterpart.

By improving gut flora balance and villosities height, the product enables to absorb more nutrients and thus reduce faeces volume. The positive impact on litter quality and pododermatitis prevalence have been measured in several trials and allows more homogeneous groups of broilers at slaughtering. For example, in the trial shown in Figure 2 (see attached pdf), less than 3% of the broilers with the AGP were affected by severe lesions compared to 18% for the control group and to 8% with a probiotic which is generally used to fight against foot pad problems. This implies that more than 97% of the broilers have no difficulty walking, eating and drinking normally.

Trials with pigs
A total of 23 field trials with pigs showed improved growth and feed conversion ratio at different stages. The product can be applied in grower and finisher periods at a low dosage to improve feed conversion especially when the economic impacts of high raw material prices are significant. Another way of using this alternative growth promoter is in pre-starter and starter period, alone or in combination with other feed additives. The research programme is focused on the next step of the regulation, limiting the use of antibiotics for therapeutic purposes in a combination of different feed additives. Neovia’s first experiments are positive from a sanitary point of view and the preventive approach seems to be promising for the future.