French animal health group Ceva has withdrawn a legal challenge to a tender to supply avian flu vaccine to France, in which it lost out to Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim. France chose Boehringer Ingelheim to supply 80 million doses of bird flu vaccine needed for its first vaccination campaign in ducks, due to start in October. The plan will make France the first country in the European Union to vaccinate poultry against the virus that has ravaged flocks worldwide. Ceva has decided to drop its appeal against the outcome of the tender in order to avoid any delay in the vaccination campaign for the livestock sector, the company said in a statement late last week. The company is continuing discussions with the authorities on subsequent phases of the vaccination campaign and has already produced more than 10 million shots of its avian influenza vaccine for ducks, Ceva added.

Results from a Wageningen University & Research, Animal Breeding and Genomics (WUR-ABG) study published in Poultry Science suggest that both natural antibody (NAb) levels and resilience indicators are heritable and are under polygenic control in a brown layer line. Resilience is the capacity of an animal to be minimally affected by disturbances or to return quickly to the state it was in before exposure to the disturbance. Given that livestock are continuously exposed to environmental disturbances, for example fluctuations in temperature or pathogens, breeding (disease) resilient livestock is important for the sustainability and profitability of livestock production. Measuring general resilience of animals is not easy. However, the increasing availability of longitudinal production data allows estimating resilience indicators based on deviations observed from expected production levels. To evaluate an animal’s general disease resistance, levels of natural antibodies (NAbs) can be used as an indicator trait.

The researchers performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify genomic regions influencing NAbs and resilience indicators in a purebred Rhode Island layer line. Results suggest that both resilience indicators and NAbs are heritable and under “polygenic control”, meaning that they are influenced by many genes with a small effect. These observations provide further insight in the genetic architecture underlying resilience, which, in turn, may facilitate genetic improvement for resilience in layer lines. According to the authors, there is currently no simple interpretation of any of the resilience indicators and it is important to further refine and validate them in order to verify their practical relevance and to implement them in management and breeding practices.

With consumer concerns about sustainability at all-time high, retailers and foodservice are prepping for the dawn of the climavore. Will this new brand of consumers choose chicken? This will be a key topic at the 2023 Chicken Marketing Summit, where experts will discuss how consumer habits are changing. “A climavore is someone who makes a specific food choice based on the climate impact of that food choice,” said Corey Chafin, partner, Consumer and Retail, Kearney. For example, a climavore is someone who chooses chicken over beef, not necessarily because of taste, but because chicken is generally perceived as having a lower environmental impact. “It’s someone who’s fundamentally making a food choice – not necessarily all food choices – but a single food choice based on the climate impact of that food choice,” Chafin added. “One of the most important things that chicken companies can do to connect with climavores is to focus on building trust,” explained Erika Stewart, consultant, consumer and retail, Kearney. These consumers are looking to chicken producers to push toward sustainable outcomes. They also expect producers to take the lead when it comes to education. Furthermore, they’re looking for education in the form of positive reinforcement. Stewart says that meat industry actors need to communicate with this consumer group in a way that makes them proud of their food choices.

A multidisciplinary team of scientists at the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station are testing to see if hyperspectral images can be used to detect a chicken breast defect known as “woody breast” that costs the poultry industry millions of dollars annually and decreases customer satisfaction. Dongyi Wang, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering, explains that hyperspectral imaging is a non-invasive sensing technique that combines a near-infrared sensor with a high-definition color camera to capture physical and chemical information.Woody breast detection with a hyperspectral camera system would take just a few seconds with a computer instead of grading by hand. “If hyperspectral imaging can be used in a poultry processing plant, that labor force could be diverted to another area.”

“Woody breast is still a safe product. It just can have a crunchy texture in some cases that is not appealing to customers, but it can be diverted for further processing into products like chicken nuggets, sausage, or chicken patties where the defect is not as noticeable,” said Casey Owens, the Novus International Professor of Poultry Science at the experiment station. Owens said one theory is that the fast-growing birds may be producing muscle faster than the blood vessels can support them, leading to muscle fiber damage and therefore increased collagen deposits. Chaitanya Kumar Reddy Pallerla, a food science graduate student working on the project, said each image with a hyperspectral camera takes up about 1 gigabyte of data. The photo is processed by a computer and correlated with a texture map indicating hardness levels in the fillet created with Owens’ previous research. Once calibrated, the system would rely on the images alone to detect woody breast. Wang said the hyperspectral camera, so far, has detected woody breast meat with about 84 percent accuracy. The goal is to accommodate high-speed sorting on a conveyor belt, or handheld portable devices, he added.

The US government has begun testing vaccines against avian influenza for poultry after a record-breaking outbreak forced the slaughter of more than 58 million chickens, turkeys and other poultry. The trials carried out by the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service are a first step towards the possible use of vaccines. The USDA is testing 2 vaccines developed by its Agricultural Research Service, 1 each from Zoetis and another from Merck Animal Health. Zoetis previously supplied its vaccine to a USDA stockpile in 2016, following the massive outbreak in the US a year earlier, but it was never used. Initial data from the animal study with a single dose of the vaccine are expected to be available in May, with researchers hoping to have 2-dose vaccine challenge studies with results in June. If the trials are successful and USDA elects to continue development, it would take at least 18-24 months for a vaccine that matches the current virus to be commercially available.

Aspergillus oryzae (AO) is a multi-cellular filamentous fungus, largely used to ferment rice and soybeans in East Asia. Its genome contains dormant metabolic pathways that are activated when the organism is under certain stressors.

This results in the production of unique metabolites that can improve animal health and gut health. While many strains of Aspergillus produce toxins, AO has lost the capacity to produce toxins through genetic mutations, making it a safe organism to work with. Feeding a postbiotic derived from it can improve layer performance and egg quality, as well as reduce mortality. “Feeding postbiotics will help satisfy the global industry’s growing consumption of eggs and egg products,” Dr César Ocasio, BioZyme Business Development and Innovation Manager, said at the 2023 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE).

According to Ocasio, the AO-derived postbiotic called AO-Biotics EQE is the first that has been developed specifically for layers and has been shown to increase the number of saleable eggs and egg mass, while allowing producers to keep their layers in production for longer periods of time. In BioZyme’s studies, layers from 15 to 43 weeks of age fed 50 grams of postbiotic per ton showed a 39% fewer incidence of shell-less eggs and 26% fewer mortalities, compared to layers fed a control diet. Improvements were also observed in egg mass, shell thickness and feed conversion ratio.

Livestock feed containing insect products is currently relatively expensive compared to conventional feed, as insects are currently mainly processed in pet food and fish feed. In these two markets a higher margin can be achieved and consumers are willing to pay higher prices than livestock farmers can afford. Christiaan Buitink, ForFarmers poultry product manager and nutritionist, said legislation is still a problem:

“Insects are now equal to pigs, chickens and cows by law. As a result, you are only allowed to feed them certain raw materials that are also suitable for these other animals. Many residual streams that could be suitable as insect food do not qualify as such.”

Dr Pattanapong Tiwasing, researcher at Scotland’s Rural College, is calling on the UK’s Food Standards Agency to urgently introduce a new “UK-specific transitional measure” to allow the insect sector to survive in the country. Pattanapong, who comes from Thailand, where eating insects as a snack is commonplace, said:

“The introduction of new and evolving EU regulations to edible insect products has muddled the waters, leading to confusing procedures for those looking to trade and export edible insects. This has been particularly impactful following Brexit because it means there are currently no regulations for the edible insect (for human consumption) industry, and it is therefore illegal to sell insects for human consumption in the UK. Policymakers need to take urgent action in order for the insect industry to survive in Europe and the UK,” said the researcher.

Audio analytics, sensors and other new tools assess bird behaviour and vocalizations to provide early warning of potential problems related to broiler health and welfare, explained Tom Darbonne, CEO at AudioT Inc. at the International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) in Atlanta, Georgia, about AudioT’s technology.

The use of sounds to monitor the health and welfare of broilers is nothing new, it’s just that in the old days, farmers had to sit in the barn and listen. Audio-based assessments help automate this process. “It’s not an entire solution, but it’s a part of the solution,” added Darbonne. “The two technologies that track behaviour really well are visual and auditory.” The system uses a combination of acoustic signal processing techniques and machine learning to track and analyse sounds heard in poultry houses.

When an unusual event (e.g. coughs) or an anomaly (e.g. dry auger or fan motor failure) occurs, farmers are alerted. Darbonne said that in addition to assessing behaviour, welfare and health, the audio technology can also detect potential environmental issues, including feed shortages, disruption to sleep cycles, instances when water pressure in the lines are too low, when ventilator fans are about to fail and other unseen or otherwise undetectable issues.

In some countries, vaccination is the most commonly used strategy to control avian influenza. However, the majority of vaccination programmes against the H9N2 avian influenza subtype have proven ineffective against infection and transmission in the field, although these vaccines were reported to work well in laboratory in specific pathogen-free (SPF) chickens.

The reason for this, according to a press release from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, is that maternal-derived antibodies (MDAs) can interfere with the immune response of chickens to vaccination, which are passed on to the unborn chicks through the egg. The presence of MDAs may be one of the reasons why most vaccination programmes against avian influenza have proven ineffective in poultry in practice. This is one of the conclusions of the research on the low pathogenicity H9N2 avian influenza virus currently prevalent in China, which was the subject of Xue Pan’s PhD thesis at Wageningen University & Research.

“Our results highlight that we need to pay more attention to MDA interference of avian influenza virus vaccines in the field, rather than just looking at antigenic distance,” said Pan, adding, “It is important to develop new vaccines to overcome MDA interference in the field.” During his research, Pan has come up with some new vaccines, such as a new adjuvant for the conventional H9N2 inactivated vaccine and turkey herpesvirus vector vaccine to improve the efficacy of the vaccines. Pan has also identified several mechanisms that influence vaccine efficacy.