Joining us at the NAFB convention in Kansas City, Missouri is Dr. Steve Lerner from Novonesis to talk about using probiotics in your animals (and yourself!).
Q: I know a lot of times when you and I have a conversation, we talk about good gut health and the use of probiotics, and not just for humans, but for our animals as well. But maybe a little bit of a new spin on this talk about how using an effective probiotic can help beyond just good gut health, but with behavior as well.
SL: When you’re talking about production animal agriculture and the production of meat, milk and eggs, we typically think about those variables that are measured in our industries, whether it is average daily gain, feed efficiency, morbidity or mortality. These are the typical measures of our industry. But some of the more subtle features of caring for animals are often overlooked, like behaviors. And now that the science of microbiology gives us new insights into the trillions and trillions of microorganisms that populate our gut collectively, the microbiome.
Well, we’re now finding tremendous evidence that the microbiome, through communication through the gut to our brain, can influence behavior. Maybe it leads to calmer dairy cattle. We have evidence that chickens (who) are less skittish and less vocal, (have) less cracked eggs, less feather picking.
We have evidence in dogs. For those animals that have some anxiety problems, you put them on an effective probiotic, it improves the quality of their gut microbiome, and the dogs are less anxious and (have) less fighting behavior.
We evidence in babies with excess crying and fussiness, you put them on an effective probiotic, the crying is reduced significantly. So, this beautiful link between what is going on in our gut, we all know firsthand when you’ve eaten something that could be potentially toxic to you and you have that rapid discharge and you can’t get more than an 8 foot radius of porcelain. We know how that disrupts our day. We tend not to think about how a good gut microbiome and a good balance of our digestive functions leads to better days. And maybe it reduces anxiety and behaviors in people in our children.
It’s a fascinating concept. And as we get more and more evidence for what is going on in the microbiome, whether we’re talking about just dietary inputs like fiber or probiotic inputs that are good supplements, we’re being beginning to understand the ramifications not only to our health, but to our behaviors.
Q: Well, and it’s something we’ve talked about as well. That gut microbiome axis that you mentioned. All of this, you know, you wouldn’t think about it tied together. And to your point, not just humans, but for our animals, production, agriculture as well.
SL: Well, there’s this beautiful story and it’s nice to say these things in a broad thing, but I’m always depending on finding. Is there really a scientific basis for anything that we’re claiming? Well, we now know that.
Let’s take humans for as an example, our colons are populated with trillions of microorganisms. Some of them are very good at digesting relatively complex undigestible fibers into a class of chemicals called short chain fatty acids. These are two to six carbon strings, and those molecules serve as the main source of energy for the cells that line our colon. And that’d be good in and of itself.
But in fact, those short chain fatty acids, when they are received by certain cell types in our intestine, (they) can send a direct neural signal to our brain. They’re pulled across the lining of our intestine into our bloodstream. They can affect immune molecules, they can affect liver function, they can affect adrenal function. They can cross the blood brain barrier and stimulate neurogenesis. It can cause positive changes in our brains, all because there are bacteria in our colon that can digest fibers.
It is an amazing story of this symbiosis between bacteria that have been on Earth for a mere 3.2 billion years and all of the species that evolved in the presence of those bacteria. It only makes sense that they’re able to communicate with us and to be of benefit to their host. If they were not of benefit, then they would have wiped out those animals. So being of benefit was good for them and good for us.
You heard me say many times, we think we carry them around with us to 40 trillion organisms. They simply find us to be an exquisite transport system that keeps them in a low oxygen environment in the dark, well fed, they’re very happy with us, thank goodness. They would shake us off like a bad case of fleas. Right?
Q: Well, and I think about this too, an effective probiotic. And not just for us as humans, but for our animals too. It comes down to better efficiency for our bodies and I think about animal agriculture, better efficiency, better weight gain, things like that?
SL: We have such overwhelming evidence I say that all the time, but the database is just exquisitely big. And when you think about the action of probiotics, I believe it is simply keeping the animal, the host, normal. We want to have normal digestion and normal absorption of nutrients.
A herd of dairy cattle, a lot of beef cattle, a flow of pigs, a flock of chickens, I’ll go on and say a crush of rhino, a fand dance of ostrich and exaltation of larks, any group of animals. The greater the percentage of animals that are normal, the better it is, period.
And if it’s a production animal agriculture system – if every animal in a 500 cal dairy was healthy and normal, that would be a miraculous day. If all 100,000 steers and heifers in a feed yard were healthy and normal, that would be a miraculous day. And I believe providing effective probiotics is one way that those who are caring for those animals can contribute to their general well-being. So we keep them healthy because we want them eating, we want them converting feed efficiently.
That’s good for us and the environment and the animals. We want them growing at the expected rate. We don’t want morbidity, mortality and we measure those things. But I believe they’re all based on the percentage of normal healthy animals in your career. And to achieve that, you provide effective probiotics.
