Poultry Genetics and Management - Achievements and Challenges According to Gerald Havenstein - 8/31/2010

For this week’s blog, we interviewed Dr. Gerald “Gerry” Havenstein, former head of the NCSU Department of Poultry Science. Dr. Havenstein discussed his highly regarded research on broiler performance changes over the past few decades, as well as his views on challenges facing the poultry industry in the future.

BRI Blog: As an expert in poultry genetics, you have researched how the poultry industry has improved broiler performance over the past half century. What has driven these changes? Nutrition? Genetics? Management?

Our research has shown that genetic selection for improved performance is responsible for about 85% of the increased growth rate and yield in broilers during the 44 years between 1957 and 2001. In a paper that several of my colleagues and I wrote about the growth, livability, and feed conversion of broilers from 1957 through 2001 (one of the most frequently cited papers in the Journal of Poultry Science), we observed that a male broiler used to take about 12 weeks to reach a target weigh of 3.5 lbs. Nowadays, typical male broilers are able to achieve that same weight in about 4 weeks.

BRI Blog: Where will further advances come from?

I believe that the greatest return on investment will come from genetic selection, both between and within lines. There is still lots of potential for increasing the growth and yield of broiler chickens. However, there is a concern with regard to the training of geneticists who will carry out the industry’s selection procedures in the future. That is fewer and fewer individuals are being trained in quantitative genetics due to the reduced number of positions available at breeding companies due to industry consolidation.

BRI Blog: What are the major challenges that poultry science will face in the future?

I think there are still three issues that must be addressed: 1) Food safety: Although we have the best food supply the world has ever known, there is still opportunity for companies to improve their food safety procedures. This is clearly borne out by the recent salmonella enteritis problems in a segment of the table egg industry. 2) Waste management: Technologies for managing farm waste have to become more cost-effective and must be adopted by the industry as a whole; but, until everyone is required to adopt such technologies, they will not happen. Companies who want to adopt superior methods currently are not doing so, because the costs involved make them non-competitive with companies who do not adopt them. 3) Transparency: I believe that technology has given us a very safe and better food supply, but some groups believe that free-range or organic farming is the only safe alternative to recent problems. Organic farming is fine for a certain small segment of the population, but production of the billions and billions of broilers that are required each year to feed the world in an affordable manner will continue to require large scale poultry production. The industry must step up and address the questions and concerns that their customers have about how they are growing and feeding the birds they market to them.

BRI Blog: What would you describe as your most notable achievements at NCSU?

I am very proud of what the Poultry Science Department at NC State achieved during my tenure as its Department Head, and it is hard to choose any favorites. Some of the important achievements during my tenure included the development of the Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center, the development of a new state-of-the-art instructional feed mill, the development of a training facility for poultry processing, and a new undergraduate poultry teaching unit. We also developed excellent collaborative research ties with a number of other universities around the U.S. and around the world. All of these things came about because of the excellent group of faculty that was present in the Poultry Science Department during my tenure.

Poultry Science - Past, Present and Future, According to Dr. Jim Garlich

For this week’s blog, we interviewed Dr. Jim Garlich, professor emeritus of the NCSU Department of Poultry Science and one of BRI’s long-time Scientific Advisors. Dr. Garlich reflects on his career in poultry science and the developments and progress he has observed over the past several decades.

BRI Blog: How did you get involved in poultry science?
I was raised on a farm in Illinois and helped my Father care for a flock of breeder hens. When I entered the University of Illinois, I expressed an interest to study poultry science and was assigned to Dr. Harold Scott as my advisor. Dr. Scott was well known for developing the Connecticut “high energy” broiler formulation used by the poultry industry and he was the one that sparked my initial interest to study poultry nutrition. I completed both BS and MS degrees in Biology at the University of Illinois and subsequent to my finishing there, I went to Cornell University to obtain my PhD under Dr. M.C. Nesheim from the Cornell Graduate School of Nutrition. I joined the Dept. of Poultry Science at NCSU because the State of NC had a major poultry industry that supported the university’s programs. There I helped to establish the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Nutrition and I taught courses in amino acid and mineral metabolism.

BRI Blog: What was your research focus at NCSU?
My research focused on poultry nutrition, specifically calcium and phosphorus metabolism, as well as amino acid requirements and availability. Along the way I cooperated with other faculty members on projects involving the interactions of nutrition with heat and cold stress, with mycotoxins, bacterial and viral diseases, and cardio-pulmonary physiology (ascites syndrome in broilers), stunting syndrome, and “flushing” in turkeys. One of my more important discoveries was that a deficiency of phosphorus (P) in the diet would increase the mortality to both heat stress and cold stress (especially at high altitudes). This led to a re-definition of the P requirement and an expansion of the “margin of safety” for P in feed formulation.

BRI Blog: What do you see are the changes in poultry nutrition and health over the years?
The changes in poultry science research are a direct result of university and industry-directed research and driven by changes instituted by the industry to provide high quality, safe food products. When main frame computers started to appear on university campuses, linear programming began to be applied to feed formulation to balance and meet the chicken’s requirements for about 40 nutrients. As a result, feed quality and costs improved. This was a big advancement in feed formulation and manufacture.

Furthermore, because most of the energy and protein in animal diets are by-products (or co-products) from processing grains, oil seeds, and meat for human consumption, researchers focused on the nutrient content and availability from feedstuffs and ways to preserve these by-products. As a result, scientists started investigating enzymes (e.g., carbohydrases, phytases, proteases) as a means to improve nutrient availability from various feedstuffs.

BRI Blog: In your view, where will the advances in the poultry industry come from in the future?
In the future, advances in poultry science and production will come from two areas: 1. Research and development on the inter-relationships between poultry genetics, nutrition, immunology, microbiology, and 2. Efficiencies in production and processing. Contrary to popular opinion, increasing the scale of poultry production and processing has greatly improved the health and welfare of the birds as well as the quality and safety of our food. To increase the scale of production, modern equipment, electronics, and science and technology are widely used to produce the high quality products that consumers demand and deserve. For example, in the poultry house, automated environmental controls maintain temperature, humidity and air quality levels and prevent diseases. And in processing and distribution, modern equipment insure safe, healthy foods. Economy of scale is cost-effective. We all win.

Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics and Why It's Not Too Late to Enter China

This is the second part of my two part blog post on China. I wrote last week about the Re-emergence of China and the Three Big F's - this week I want to focus on the unique form of capitalism that exists in China today and why, if you are a business owner, you need to have a "China Strategy."

1. Capitalism, with Chinese characteristics: When you visit the major cities in China such as Beijing or Shanghai, you might feel like you are in world class modern city like New York City or London, but don’t confuse the trappings of modern life with free markets or lifestyles. Deng Xiao Ping, the former leader of the Communist Party of China, coined the phrase “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” in the 80’s, and today I would turn that phrase around to characterize modern China as “Capitalism, with Chinese Characteristics.” Anyone who has done business in China knows about the far-reaching arm of the local and provincial governments and the need to develop relationships with officials there who will look favorably upon your business and help you succeed. But the hand that giveth can also taketh away, and if you find yourself on the wrong side of the relationship, as the American company Google recently experienced, life can get very difficult in a significant way.

In his recent book “The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations,” author and diplomat Ian Bremmer paints the grim view of a future Chinese market where state-controlled companies use their clout to sell goods to the world and reinvest those proceeds into solidifying political power rather than fueling economic growth. Mr. Bremmer compares “state capitalism” in China to a soccer match where the government controls the referees and many of the players, such that it improves the chances of predicting the game’s outcome, in contrast to the type of “mixed capitalism” practiced in US and Europe, where referees exist only to ensure enforcement of the recognized rules and the players engage in genuine competition.

2. Come for the low labor costs, stay for the markets: Given the inherent risks for foreign companies to do business in China as outlined above and elsewhere, why would anyone do it? I think many companies are in this quandary – whenever I talk about doing business with or in China, invariably there is someone who asks the “China Question”, i.e., “how do I know I won’t be cheated and/or have my product immediately copied when I go to China?” Fair question – the answer is you don’t know, and you must take all precautions necessary, certainly, but I believe the balance is shifting more towards the benefits of being in China outweighing the risks, and as China shifts from a net producer to the world to one that consumes more goods and services, it will be a huge driver of growth for many years to come.

In the article “Is It Too Late To Enter China?” in the April 2010 Harvard Business Review, the author Edward Tse writes that the original reasons Western companies were in China, low labor and operational costs, are becoming less relevant now and that more and more international companies need to develop a China strategy that integrates not just sourcing from, but also selling and marketing to the burgeoning Chinese market in order to be successful.

So there you have it, my thoughts and reflections on China and the challenges and opportunities it represents. I certainly don't claim to be a China expert, but as President of a company that does business internationally, it is critical for me to learn more about the issues this vast country will face in the coming decades. I believe that the future of BRI, and many companies like ours, will be significantly impacted by the developments there.

The Re-emergence of China and the Three Big “F’s”

Let me just say that I am by no means a China expert, but since I started BRI over a decade ago, I have become increasingly interested in the Chinese economy and have seen first-hand on my visits there the many dynamic challenges and opportunities facing that vast country. While the subject of China could fill many chapters and many books, I wanted to share just some of my observations about China in our blog over the next couple of weeks.

1. The Re-emergence of China: any way you look at it, the numbers are staggering – while the US and European economies are mired in recession, China registered a double-digit growth rate in its GDP this last quarter and earlier this year China surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy. Yet if you ask any economist familiar with Chinese history, they will tell you that this is no big surprise, and that up through the 19th century, China’s economy was one of the largest in the world, occupying as much as one-third of the world’s economy in 1870. So, while it’s not been in our lifetime, China has been a strong economic power in the past and one might argue that the recent rapid economic growth is simply China re-asserting itself in the global economic stage after falling behind in the last century.

2. The Three big “F’s”: in a country of 1.3 billion people, any measureable cultural movement or trend is bound to have a significant economic impact across the world. Here are my top three for China, which I have conveniently categorized as the “three big F’s”:

Food – as the per capita income in China increases, one of the first things to get upgraded is diet, as consumers move from vegetable-based diets to animal-based diets. As a result, chicken and pork production increases and demand for imported animal feed ingredients, such as soybean meal, increases. According to the US Soybean Export Council, China is by far the largest export market for US soybeans, buying over 11.8 million metric tons of the crop last year, and has doubled its agricultural imports since 2002.

Fuel – one of the few bright spots in the automotive industry is the burgeoning growth in automobile sales in China. According to Bloomberg, sales of vehicles in July 2010 grew 15% from the previous year. All these new cars consume fossil fuels, driving the need for China to source oil by doing deals with oil-rich countries anywhere they can find them. In addition to its voracious appetite for oil, China's energy demands continue to climb, driving the need for alternatives to its ubiquitous coal power plants, creating opportunities for wind, solar or biomass energy.

Fendi – In my trips to China, I am amazed at the level of affluence and consumerism displayed in the big metropolitan cities. From Fendi to Ferrari, just about all the major luxury brands have a presence in Beijing and Shanghai. And as the Chinese government eases control of its currency (yuan), its value will rise against the US dollar and Euro and the buying power of the domestic Chinese consumer will become a real driver of economic growth within China. Whether the Chinese consumer will ever achieve the super-consumer status of Americans, however, is still debatable.

Next week, Capitalism, with Chinese characteristics…and is it too late to catch the China wave?

What's Next for BRI's Chairman and Co-founder Jason Shih?

This week’s guest blog is the continuation of an interview that Juan Carlos Rosa-Medina, BRI’s Market Development Manager, had with Dr. Jason Shih, Chairman and Co-founder of BRI, 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 spending time with their grandson in North Carolina. This blog is the second of two parts – this week Prof. Shih talks about his international research experiences and his plans to raise awareness of biogas in his retirement years.

Juan Carlos: Throughout your career you have been visiting professor for several foreign universities. This let you build bridges with Asia and Europe. What do you feel most proud of from your international work?

Jason: I feel very proud of having been able to enhance the biogas technology in China, something they have already been using for hundreds of years, and opening the eyes of US academics to this source of sustainable energy. In the early 80s, I visited a small town in rural China that was using the energy and byproducts produced by a digester to cook their food, grow fish, and fertilize soil, something unseen in the West.

I was able to use my research at NC State to introduce the themophillic digester technology to increase productivity significantly while reducing the size of the digester from a basketball-court-sized one to a ping-pong-table-sized one. While in Europe, I compared my Thermophilic digester technology with the Mesophilic technology, demonstrating increased energy production and 100% elimination of pathogens, which opened the eyes of the farming community not only on energy production, but also on safety for the workers and the environment.

Also, in the Netherlands, I proved the use of my keratinase, the accidental enzyme I discovered in a digester, to degrade Prion proteins that are associated with mad cow disease. In the beginning my colleagues were quite skeptical, but in the end they said “you’re very lucky” for all the uses we were able to develop from my discovery of the keratinase.

Juan Carlos: What are your plans as you enter your retirement years?

Jason: To continue to help BRI grow and to be an ambassador for biogas. I want to make biogas energy economical and more popular. I have been invited to participate in a project in China to build a big digester to create a “biogas town”. This will be a pilot for 20 other similar cities to come. It will collect all sources of human and animal waste to produce energy and run cars. It will have pipelines throughout the entire city and biogas stations instead of fuel stations, and the public transportation will also run on biogas.