This week’s guest blog is written by Juan Carlos Rosa-Medina, BRI’s Market Development Manager. Juan Carlos recently caught up with Dr. Jason Shih, Chairman and Co-founder of BRI and winner of the World’s Poultry Science Association Research Award and the Evonik Degussa Award for Achievement in Poultry Science. Prof. Shih retired from the Department of Poultry Science at NC State University last year and he and his wife spend part of the year in Asia and the rest of their time traveling around the world and playing with their grandson in North Carolina. This blog is the first of two parts – this week Prof. Shih talks about his early years and how he came to develop the technology behind BRI’s Versazyme and Valkerase products.
Juan Carlos: You're well known as an innovator in the poultry nutrition area, but some people might not know you actually studied Botany in college in Taiwan. What prompted you to come to the US and switch your career focus to Animal Nutrition?
Jason: As a Botany student in Taiwan in the early 60s, I was able to see the boom of Biochemistry, so I pursued a Master’s degree in that field but soon realized that if I stayed in Taiwan, my career options in that field would be limited. So, I applied for and was awarded an assistantship at Cornell University and in 1969, I brought my wife and young son to the US so I could pursue a Ph.D. in Biochemistry there. After I received my Ph.D. from Cornell four years later, I had the opportunity to work as a Post-doctoral Fellow in Bacteriology with a Nobel Prize nominee professor at the University of Illinois. How I ended up in the field of Poultry Science has much to do with my next position, working as a Senior Researcher with legendary poultry nutritionist Dr. Melton Scott at Cornell University. It was a very productive time and I was able to publish three papers in one year’s time. Soon after that, I was lucky enough to be offered a faculty position by the Department of Poultry Science at NC State University and in 1976, I moved down to Raleigh, NC and began studying the environmental issues related to anaerobic digestion of poultry waste.
Juan Carlos: So how did you make the transition from poultry waste to poultry nutrition?
Jason: This story has now become a bit of a legend among those who know me and my work, and there are probably several versions out there. But here’s the real story - a hen in the layer house where we were conducting anaerobic digestion studies expired (died) and was inadvertently transported into the waste digester. When we opened the digester we couldn’t find a single feather, so I hypothesized that there was a bacteria that was able to break down the feather protein (keratin) and use it to grow. After several attempts, one of my graduate students found the bacteria. I was so excited that I told him “forget about biogas!”, now it was the about patenting our discovery and developing an industrial application for animal nutrition. Initially, the idea was to use the keratinase enzyme on feather lysate and then directly on the feathers, which would make the feather meal production process more efficient and economical. Sometime later, still thinking about what the keratinase could do, I asked one of my students to add the enzyme directly into chicken feed, and lo’ and behold, the birds grew bigger without consuming more feed.
Thus, it was through these serendipitous discoveries and almost another decade’s worth of hard work at BRI, that today we have opportunity to offer to the poultry industry two very different and completely novel products, the Versazyme enzyme feed additive for animal diets and the Valkerase keratinase-based enzyme for efficient feather meal production.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
“Gut check from JAM2010” – immune systems fight it out with gut microbes in the bowels of healthy and sick animals
I am back from my weeklong retreat to the rarefied atmosphere of Denver, CO, where I attended the Joint Annual Meeting (JAM 2010) of the Animal Science Societies. It is fair to say there was a lot going on with the conference, considering five animal science groups were represented there, resulting in a rather unwieldy web address and creating a big tent for folks from the poultry, swine, dairy and cattle, and even pet food industries to gather together. The scientific program for JAM 2010 can be found here.
There was a session at JAM2010 I found particularly interesting. Dr. Hyun Lillhoj, a researcher at the USDA ARS and past recipient of several PSA research awards, chaired a standing-room only session Tuesday entitled “Immunity, Nutrition, Genomics, and Gut Microbiota.” I found the session to be a good balance between the latest scientific techniques and more practical, “so why does it matter to me?” information. As has been noted before, antibiotic use in animal production is under much scrutiny in the US, with the FDA issuing a draft guidance on the use of antimicrobials in food producing animals earlier this year. Thus, the theory goes, the better we understand how antibiotics help or hurt the microbial population in the animal’s gut, the better we can develop effective ways to achieve the same outcomes with other, “kinder and gentler” products or procedures.
G. Donald Ritter, DVM, Director of Health Services at Mountaire Farms, talked about gangrenous dermatitis (“GD”) and how it is an “inside out” translocation of the bad bacteria Clostridium perfringens from the gut to the skin or other organs, where it “sets up shop, goes toxic and results in death of the chicken within a few days.” With the help of the nutrition company Danisco, Dr. Ritter analyzed the microbial flora of farms that were treated with anti-coccidiosis drugs or anti-coccidiosis vaccines (coccidiosis is a serious poultry disease caused by protozoan infections). He observed that the chickens on the vaccine-treated farms had more beneficial lactobacillus bacteria in their guts and less of the bad Clostridia bacteria. Of course, the key question is, were the beneficial lactobacillus promoting better gut health, or does a healthy gut promote the growth of lactobacillus?
To address more directly the question of whether good bacteria is cause or effect of good gut health, Dr. Matt Koci of NC State University presented results at the same session where he described supplementing chicken feed with a direct-fed “good bacteria” supplement (Primalac) and then proceeding to “poke it with a stick” by challenging those chickens’ immune system with the bad bacteria Salmonella enteritidis. Operating under the premise that an “overactive immune system eats first,” Dr. Koci found that adding the direct-fed microbial lowered the energy utilization of the birds immune system such that it was able to allocate more of its energy to growth and less to immunity. In a similar way, Dr. Lillehoj presented work done by her post-doctoral fellow at USDA on diet and gene interactions that looked at how bioactive plant extracts added to poultry feed influenced the expression of certain genes involved in the bird’s immune response.
I find the interactions between nutrition and gut health in animals to be a fascinating one, whether it is directly as a result of competitive exclusion in the gut by the “good bacteria” over the “bad bacteria” or that there are other, more subtle mechanisms at work, including immune modulators, beneficial peptides and/or “pre-biotic” nutrients. With the more sophisticated tools we have now (nutrigenomics, gene arrays, expression analysis, RFLP, etc.), much more information will be gleaned in the years ahead in this active and important area of research. Furthermore, it is exciting to think about how some of these interactions in animal systems can be translated into advances in the promotion of human health.
There was a session at JAM2010 I found particularly interesting. Dr. Hyun Lillhoj, a researcher at the USDA ARS and past recipient of several PSA research awards, chaired a standing-room only session Tuesday entitled “Immunity, Nutrition, Genomics, and Gut Microbiota.” I found the session to be a good balance between the latest scientific techniques and more practical, “so why does it matter to me?” information. As has been noted before, antibiotic use in animal production is under much scrutiny in the US, with the FDA issuing a draft guidance on the use of antimicrobials in food producing animals earlier this year. Thus, the theory goes, the better we understand how antibiotics help or hurt the microbial population in the animal’s gut, the better we can develop effective ways to achieve the same outcomes with other, “kinder and gentler” products or procedures.
G. Donald Ritter, DVM, Director of Health Services at Mountaire Farms, talked about gangrenous dermatitis (“GD”) and how it is an “inside out” translocation of the bad bacteria Clostridium perfringens from the gut to the skin or other organs, where it “sets up shop, goes toxic and results in death of the chicken within a few days.” With the help of the nutrition company Danisco, Dr. Ritter analyzed the microbial flora of farms that were treated with anti-coccidiosis drugs or anti-coccidiosis vaccines (coccidiosis is a serious poultry disease caused by protozoan infections). He observed that the chickens on the vaccine-treated farms had more beneficial lactobacillus bacteria in their guts and less of the bad Clostridia bacteria. Of course, the key question is, were the beneficial lactobacillus promoting better gut health, or does a healthy gut promote the growth of lactobacillus?
To address more directly the question of whether good bacteria is cause or effect of good gut health, Dr. Matt Koci of NC State University presented results at the same session where he described supplementing chicken feed with a direct-fed “good bacteria” supplement (Primalac) and then proceeding to “poke it with a stick” by challenging those chickens’ immune system with the bad bacteria Salmonella enteritidis. Operating under the premise that an “overactive immune system eats first,” Dr. Koci found that adding the direct-fed microbial lowered the energy utilization of the birds immune system such that it was able to allocate more of its energy to growth and less to immunity. In a similar way, Dr. Lillehoj presented work done by her post-doctoral fellow at USDA on diet and gene interactions that looked at how bioactive plant extracts added to poultry feed influenced the expression of certain genes involved in the bird’s immune response.
I find the interactions between nutrition and gut health in animals to be a fascinating one, whether it is directly as a result of competitive exclusion in the gut by the “good bacteria” over the “bad bacteria” or that there are other, more subtle mechanisms at work, including immune modulators, beneficial peptides and/or “pre-biotic” nutrients. With the more sophisticated tools we have now (nutrigenomics, gene arrays, expression analysis, RFLP, etc.), much more information will be gleaned in the years ahead in this active and important area of research. Furthermore, it is exciting to think about how some of these interactions in animal systems can be translated into advances in the promotion of human health.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Howdy Partner!
This week I’m blogging from the Joint Annual Meeting (JAM) of the Animal Science Societies, which includes a whole hodge-podge of animal science groups such as the American Society of Animal Science, American Dairy Science Association, Poultry Science Association, Canadian Society of Animal Science, and Associacion Mexicana de Produccion Animal. This is our second year of being a corporate sponsor for the Poultry Science Association, and we are proud to support a group that has done so much to help the poultry industry over the years.
As I mentioned in last week’s blog, we would not be in business were it not for the long-term relationships we have developed over the years. From our research collaborations with the Poultry Science Department at NC State University to our multi-year partnerships with distributors Natural Nutrients in Thailand and Novus International in the US, we are honored to have worked with some of the most devoted and passionate people in the animal nutrition industry today.
We started selling the Valkerase product back in August 2006, starting with a key customer in Thailand, and now with the help of Asia-based Natural Nutrients, have expanded that to three large poultry plants there producing over 1,200 tons of feather meal per month. Steve Caskey, Managing Director of Natural Nutrients, has told us that “Valkerase helps my clients improve the digestibility of their feather meals and allows them to use lower cooking temperatures for processing feather meal. This directly benefits their bottom lines in terms of energy cost savings, but also is beneficial for reducing odors and lowering maintenance costs on the equipment.”
We started selling the Versazyme product even earlier, back in Sept. 2005, and after several fits and starts, were able to get customers to buy into the novel concept of using a pure protease feed additive, especially after having signed a key distribution agreement with Novus International in 2008. Scott Carter, Global Poultry Director for Novus, says about Versazyme (which they market under the Cibenza DP100 brand), “It's a critical feed enzyme in an important business! Helping to feed the world affordable food needs more tools like this!”
Please contact us today if there is something BRI can help you with and maybe someday we’ll be able to quote you in the BRI blog!
As I mentioned in last week’s blog, we would not be in business were it not for the long-term relationships we have developed over the years. From our research collaborations with the Poultry Science Department at NC State University to our multi-year partnerships with distributors Natural Nutrients in Thailand and Novus International in the US, we are honored to have worked with some of the most devoted and passionate people in the animal nutrition industry today.
We started selling the Valkerase product back in August 2006, starting with a key customer in Thailand, and now with the help of Asia-based Natural Nutrients, have expanded that to three large poultry plants there producing over 1,200 tons of feather meal per month. Steve Caskey, Managing Director of Natural Nutrients, has told us that “Valkerase helps my clients improve the digestibility of their feather meals and allows them to use lower cooking temperatures for processing feather meal. This directly benefits their bottom lines in terms of energy cost savings, but also is beneficial for reducing odors and lowering maintenance costs on the equipment.”
We started selling the Versazyme product even earlier, back in Sept. 2005, and after several fits and starts, were able to get customers to buy into the novel concept of using a pure protease feed additive, especially after having signed a key distribution agreement with Novus International in 2008. Scott Carter, Global Poultry Director for Novus, says about Versazyme (which they market under the Cibenza DP100 brand), “It's a critical feed enzyme in an important business! Helping to feed the world affordable food needs more tools like this!”
Please contact us today if there is something BRI can help you with and maybe someday we’ll be able to quote you in the BRI blog!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
What makes BRI tick?
In past weeks I’ve explained how our company came to be and why you should care about our future. This week I would like dig a bit deeper and ask the more philosophical question: why does BRI exist; i.e., what is the purpose and meaning behind what we do? Sure we produce great feed additive products that help chickens grow bigger (Versayme) and innovative enzymes that help producers process poultry feathers (Valkerase), and we are proud of those achievements. But that is just one aspect of our company. Actually, the real value we create as a company is in the relationships and partnerships we’ve developed over the years. I’ve always said that starting and growing a business is hard, probably one of the hardest things a person can do in his or her lifetime, but the people you meet along the way really make it worthwhile. In addition to the great people we have recruited to the BRI team over the years, we also treasure the opportunity to continue working with our long-term partners such as NC State University, Natural Nutrients and Novus International, as well as our key suppliers in Asia.
Our focus on cooperative relationships carries over into another important aspect of our company, and that is partnering with community and non-profit groups. Through support of local organizations like the Inter-faith Food Shuttle to help redistribute perishable food in the Raleigh, NC area and the Triangle Chapter of the NC Association of Asian-American Professionals, a leadership and networking group for young professionals in North Carolina, we demonstrate our commitment to improve the lives of those around us. And reaching out further, our support of the Tzu-chi Foundation helps with relief efforts around the world in areas impacted by natural disasters or facing urgent medical needs. We also continue to be active corporate sponsors of various industry groups such as the Carolina Feed Industry Association, the Poultry Science Association, and the World’s Poultry Science Association.
Because our products have the greatest impact in emerging countries that are significantly increasing their livestock production, we spend a lot of time thinking about sustainability, both from the standpoint of economic viability and environmental impact. Our products not only help save money, we also help producers grow healthy, sustainable chickens with lower environmental impact (i.e., the “Big Green Chickens” principle). We are fortunate to count Novus International as one of our key distribution partners, as they have maintained a leadership position in corporate sustainability for many years. Please contact us and let us know how BRI can make a difference in your corner of the world, either directly, through improved animal nutrition, or indirectly, through supporting causes that are important to you.
Our focus on cooperative relationships carries over into another important aspect of our company, and that is partnering with community and non-profit groups. Through support of local organizations like the Inter-faith Food Shuttle to help redistribute perishable food in the Raleigh, NC area and the Triangle Chapter of the NC Association of Asian-American Professionals, a leadership and networking group for young professionals in North Carolina, we demonstrate our commitment to improve the lives of those around us. And reaching out further, our support of the Tzu-chi Foundation helps with relief efforts around the world in areas impacted by natural disasters or facing urgent medical needs. We also continue to be active corporate sponsors of various industry groups such as the Carolina Feed Industry Association, the Poultry Science Association, and the World’s Poultry Science Association.
Because our products have the greatest impact in emerging countries that are significantly increasing their livestock production, we spend a lot of time thinking about sustainability, both from the standpoint of economic viability and environmental impact. Our products not only help save money, we also help producers grow healthy, sustainable chickens with lower environmental impact (i.e., the “Big Green Chickens” principle). We are fortunate to count Novus International as one of our key distribution partners, as they have maintained a leadership position in corporate sustainability for many years. Please contact us and let us know how BRI can make a difference in your corner of the world, either directly, through improved animal nutrition, or indirectly, through supporting causes that are important to you.
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