What’s next for poultry health?

Terrence O'Keefe: Hello and welcome to the Future of Poultry podcast series.

My name is Terrence O’Keefe and I am the content director for WATT Global Media. I recently had the opportunity to moderate a panel on the future of poultry health. This discussion was sponsored by Ceva, Cobb-Vantress, Natural Biologics, Targan and Zoetis. Our panelists are; Joshua Deines, Ph.D., technical service device lead, Zoetis ; William Herring, Ph.D., vice president, research and development, Cobb-Vantress; Theresia Lavergne, Ph.D., senior technical service manager, Natural Biologics; and Dr. Linnea Tracy, veterinary services manager, Ceva Animal Health.

Dr. Herring, William, genomic selection has been used in poultry breeding for over a decade, have we seen improvements in poultry health outcomes in the field that can be attributed to genomic selection?

William Herring: Interesting question. Let's start with a little background on what genomic selection is just to get us all on the same plane. Genomic selection is still relatively new across agricultural genetics and has been used across crops, livestock and poultry over the last 10 to 15 years.

And as I think about it, previous to genomic selection, all of those areas basically just use documented pedigrees, and things we could measure in broilers or cattle, dairy, whatever, to come up with a prediction approach on how we select each of the species. When genomic selection came along, really what it did was just honestly enhance our accuracy of predicting the future. Really, what it does is it trains on those other data that I referenced, and then along with the genotypes gives us a better idea and be just a little bit more accurate to quite a bit more accurate in terms of how we select or cull in the genetic selection process.

It's well documented across all those species I mentioned in terms of how it's impacted things, and broilers. I don't think you're any exception.

Really, when it comes to health and the health associated traits, it's even much more powerful in that area. Because first of all, those traits are honestly fairly difficult to measure. Think about a big bucket trait like mortality. There's a whole distribution of underlying causes, and honestly, they're difficult to measure well and document well. As a geneticist, I always tell people that if I can measure something really well, I can change it.

But health is one of those and underlying livability, that is a challenge. If I can do that, well, genomics then augmented with the pedigree and phenotypes that we measure really can be terribly and positively impactful. There are other trait examples, but livability is one that it can definitely impact. How has it changed things? I think some of the underlying traits like leg health, joint health, things that we do measure at the pedigree or nucleus level, it's been very helpful in those we've looked within our own systems, and it's very positive. We still have a ways to go, because there's a whole profile of other traits that are important to our customers. But it's it's been a value add when it comes to changing the bird.

O’Keefe: Thanks, continuing on with the whole genome sequencing area. Theresia, on the scale of crawl, walk, run, where do you think we are in terms of understanding in effectively managing the gut microbiome? I know, we've had tremendous advances, where we can actually figure out what's in there. And we weren't able to before, so where are we and how are we progressing?

Theresia Lavergne: We are definitely not running. We definitely have been crawling. And I believe we're starting to stand up and walk just a little bit at times. But definitely in the big scheme of life, this is still a very, very new science, right?

Since the 1990s, we've been talking about the microbiome in humans and animals. And so it's really still a very new science. We learned that there's a lot to learn about it. Some of the things we do know is it's very dynamic. Definitely not static, our gut microbiome, it can be changed very easily and very quickly. There's so many different production scenarios and health status scenarios that we might use in our research to change the microbiome. And then we add to that the feedstuffs, just even change feed phase changes throughout poultry production, change the microbiome, whatever happens, or what we have in the environment changes the microbiome. We just learned that there's just so many fluctuations in it, and kind of have to eventually narrow down on production systems and what's in the environment to kind of help make things stable and have the best guess production related to the microbiome.

And, as you referred to, and again, me saying it's a fairly new science. Part of that is because a lot of these biomarkers are bacteria, they are in the gut are not culturable. So we have needed the DNA sequencing technology to even find them. We've learned that there are more of those microbial or bacteria cells in the gut than there are cells, human cells or animal cells within the body. So it's huge. You have both positive and negative bacteria, how they affect health and growth. And we're still identifying what bacteria might be in the microbiome and the effect that those bacteria have good and bad, what metabolic systems they're involved in. It's huge. It's definitely a challenge when you work in that area, because things change. There's a lot to learn. But I think we're really making progress now and learning how some of our feed additives can be used to make the microbiome very favorable and get very improved production improve health status.

O’Keefe: Josh, making sure that each bird is vaccinated properly is important for ensuring protection for the entire flock. We've had for decades now automated systems, like Innova vaccination to ensure that each embryo is vaccinated without requiring a lot of labor. For short live birds like broilers, what trends do you see coming in vaccination?

Josh Deines: Definitely a lot of things are changing, always trying to be better. And some of those things you mentioned, I think are still trends today. We should make sure that every bird is vaccinated. And that's one thing we've been able to accomplish with in ovo vaccination is fast mass application but individualized dose so that every embryo comes out vaccinated and hopefully protected as well.

So how can we apply that same concept to say spray vaccination to ensure that every bird is getting a dose? Some things that we see is more people are looking at the data to say, hey, we have previously been applying seven milliliters and spray vaccination, for example, but the same dose applied at 14 or 21 milliliters just a higher volume, that same dose is getting better uptake. So how can we apply some some things we've learned from in ovo to get all the birds vaccinated to spray as a trend? And then you also mentioned the labor component. In ovo vaccination did reduce labor significantly compared to say hand vaccinating or automated subcutaneously.

So how can we continue to reduce the labor because that challenge has not gone away? In fact, in some circumstances, it's getting worse in the hatchery. One trend I see in that is, how can we automate the quality control portion? We've got a lot of automated processes, we've got great technology and vaccines, but how do we quality control that in an automated fashion. One thing we always try to accomplish through in ovo was say, hey, anything that could go wrong is detectable and repairable in the field through quality control processes. However, they still take a human intervention of some kind, somebody has to read that somebody has to repair it. So how can we continue to change that to make it better? And I guess the final trend I'd speak to is, you know, especially for broilers, and even our long-lived birds, more of our vaccines are being administered at the hatchery than they ever were before. And that trend continues. And a lot of that is due to vectored vaccine technology. It's not necessarily new technology, but it's becoming widely accepted. It's shown proven and more people are jumping on that that bandwagon. If you're not familiar with the vectored vaccines, it's essentially one product, one cell that when administered, it provides protection against multiple diseases. And we see that trend continuing.

O’Keefe: Linnea, I know you've worked a lot with layers. And of course, the US layer industry is going through a transition. I think the latest stats I saw were well over 30% of the layers now are cage free in the U.S. What are the health challenges that have been reemerging as we go out of the cage and onto the floor? And are there any solutions out there for these?

Linnea Tracy: That's a big question that we've been tackling all across the industry for years now. And it's been an ongoing conversation for both the producers and the companies coming in to help them in a technical service capacity, I think the way I would start this conversation is by saying that the things we're seeing, and even the challenges we're facing with infrastructure is nothing that the industry hasn't done before. And now as we move into a more modern age, with better technology, and devices and knowledge of what we're doing, it's should be hopefully even easier and more successful than we've ever had this before. Previously, we've had major caged, cage free and vice versa transitions in the industry, we are able to handle it now. It is a challenge in terms of infrastructure and capital investment, and even design changes in our own production systems. But everything we're seeing now, in terms of disease, as well as the physical challenges are, you know, the old is new. I hear that phrase used a lot in veterinary circles. I'm hearing an embrace a lot by the producers as well, diseases that they haven't been seen by the younger generations of veterinarians have come back out. We see things like more of cholera, more of erysipelas, as we start moving these birds out of cages, and even into outdoor systems that we haven't been using for years.

There's a lot that we can do. It's about tapping our historical knowledge of the industry. There's also a lot of upcoming design changes in terms of administering vaccines, even better than we ever had before, understanding the vaccination programs that we need, seeing and tracking the changes that are happening in the microbiota, both good and bad in these systems, because everything is a little bit different. We are all capable of doing this together. I try to preach the motto, let's not panic; let's work together. We live and work in an industry that is one of the most creative and collaborative in the United States.

That goes together, pharmaceuticals, our genetics, our technical services and the producers themselves who are in those barns every day. There are challenges. I don't think many of them are too novel. I think we all have the solutions out there and it's about tapping the knowledge that we already have and exists that we just haven't been using for a few years.

O’Keefe: With the longer live birds, we have some different challenges when it comes to vaccination because, with a broiler only 35 to 42 days sometimes on the farm,  the in ovo vaccination is fine, that takes them through to slaughter. But we don't have that luxury with some breeders and also with layers. Joshua, what solutions are out there? Or do you think might be coming to deal with laying hens? Now we have to vaccinate multiple times for salmonella and some other things. And that involves individually handling and sticking the birds with a needle. Are there some possible ways around that where we can hopefully still do it where we get every bird, but we don't need the labor and don't have to bring a crew from farm to farm?

Deines: That's the challenge. And something we're always working on. I think one is the vaccine technology, finding vaccines that have longer lived immunity, earlier onset and longer lived is the first thing. What vaccine has been administered? But as you mentioned, the actual administration is the challenge. There are things like, for example, we have a double breast vaccinator that we're starting to employ more so we could simultaneously be administering multiple products and multiple product types in a single handling. We may not be able to remove handling altogether, but we could remove the number of times and the stress of that single time we are handling the burden.

O’Keefe: Theresia, we talked about the microbiome and how we were starting to learn more. Are there any common poultry disease challenges today that you think our increased knowledge of the microbiome is going to help us mitigate and maybe prevent outbreaks?

Lavergne: Definitely. We're talking about the gut and the microbiome in the gut. I think pathogenic diseases and even some protozoan diseases are what we're going to be really efficient at or be able to tackle and find solutions first. Because what we're feeding, being a nutritionist, I always like to incorporate that into what we do. It's huge, right? We have lots of feed additives out there on all the biotics; the prebiotics, probiotics, post biotics and we learn more about those every day. We find more strains of bacteria to use as probiotics, and, of course, the post biotics and then we even have the phytobiotics. We're learning which to use, how to use them and shift that microbiome population, obviously to be more favorable to whether we're out competing the negative bacteria, as well as we're really going to have to focus in on some of these commensal bacteria that are opportunistic and become pathogenic. And, yes, so pathogenic, and even some protozoal diseases, I think are going to be where we can make the most progress right now. And obviously, I like to do that with feed additives, because they can have a huge effect on the whole microbiome population and good and bad.

O’Keefe: As a follow up, competitive exclusion was something that we've known about for decades. The challenge in the U.S. was it had to be a defined culture, if you were going to apply it to the birds in the field. Going forward, is it going to be a combination of probiotics and prebiotics and other additives? Is it going to be a multifactor solution?

Lavergne: It definitely will have to be. Being in the industry for a while, I was here when we had antibiotics. And we all know, when we take that (antibiotics) out, there has not been one replacement to do everything. So that's why we're working towards these combinations and seeing how effective they can be. The probiotics, feeding the good bacteria, the prebiotics, feeding that good bacteria, as well as learning more about different strains of bacillus or different prebiotics we can use.  We're just having to figure out how to use them all together, what combinations might work, because there's not one tool. We have to develop overall programs. And again, I go back to the feed and what we can feed but it's not that it's all management as well as environment within the poultry houses. It's just a huge program. We have lots of tools we can use in that program, but not one magic dust or whatever you want to call it.

O’Keefe: If anyone has any questions, just raise your hand and we'll bring them in. William, I know, we spoke before, once at I think at the Poultry Tech Summit about how artificial intelligence is really going to be impacting breeding programs. Could you explain a little bit about how that's going to work?

Herring: I'll do my best. This is actually a question that I get very frequently now, from customers, from within our team, really kind of across the entire space. I'll try and give a few different examples. At the end of the day, any part of our business that involves data or imagery, AI offers a huge opportunity, and I think at several different levels. Let me just kind of hit on hit on a few of those.

When it comes to impacting what I, myself and my team do on a daily basis, which is genetic improvement. You know, you we talked about genomics a minute ago, and when that got incorporated 10 to 15 years ago, without honestly exception across all those species I mentioned, you saw step changes in genetic improvement, the slope of genetic trend dramatically increased.

I think this is really the next area that can have that similar type of impact, not necessarily on the genetic prediction part, but really, in how we measure things. As I said earlier, if I can measure something really well, and there's some sort of underlying genetic architecture, I can change it in any direction. There's been a whole area of traits that we've had trouble accurately measuring. A few examples of those are behaviors. One of those is how animals and poultry move. One of those are things we subjectively score. And then we try and take that subjective scoring system and turn it into a metric that we can select on and change the population based on what we think is right.

Let's just take gait score, for example. You can utilize video imaging technology, to 24/7, record a bird. And if you can do that, and you can tie that to the individual identification of that bird. Artificial intelligence really does a very nice job of number one, mapping what we think we score to the image itself. It removes that human variation. And then that's step one. And when you go to step two, you can actually take on an unsupervised learning type of model. And then the data can begin to look and say, wow, this type of imaging is different than this on these specific birds. And suddenly, things become much more objective. It gives insights into things that the human eye couldn't pick up. That's actually a very active area of research for us to give a little bit of a plug.

Last year, and again this week, we did an announcement on a request for proposals, called the Cobb Research Initiative. And that's an attempt to engage with the research community and Cobb funds projects that impact welfare and animal health is one of those. Last year, we funded nine different research projects. Four of those were deeply embedded with artificial intelligence. And one of those is utilizing cameras and gait scoring. We have one that's with male fertility, but it's all-around utilization of AI. So that's, that's number one. And there's a couple of more that I think, are, are really important.

As we look somewhat outside of the genetic space, we have lots of very deep data that's publicly available around genomic sequencing around understanding protein structures that exist phenomics databases, I think that that's probably the ripest area that we'll see artificial intelligence have an impact on. I kind of term it as also computational biology. So, if we look at whether we're going to try and manufacture or synthesize the next vaccine that's going to be more meaningful, I think interrogating the data with artificial intelligence can really provide great insights into what those targets should be different than how it's been done before. To give you an example of that. And I would encourage you just to read a couple of articles on it.

Google has a start up in the UK, Deep Mind. They've done lots of really cool things. But one of them is they've simulated tens of millions of different protein structures. If you actually go into Google Scholar, you'll find that protein database now referenced many times. So that's a perfect example of how we can utilize the computational biology approach for impacting animal health. From a genetics perspective, we can use that same approach for teams like mine, to go in and utilize that same approach to identify host gene targets that impact very specific diseases. Because we haven't had great success on specific disease resistance or resilience when it comes to genetic improvement, I think that's a very rich area for development that that we will see progress on.

Probably a third one, and we could go on, but a third one for sure, is really around understanding how to optimally manage the bird. And this is across all integrated protein, whether it's poultry or other species. With the ability to have micro sensors now across barns, understand the environment, the conditions in which we're exposing birds to what we think is best practice, you marry that up with close out (flock settlement) information, or individual bird, bird measurement information. These are the types of algorithms that can help us as we work with customers technical service, those sorts of things really come up with here's the best play bird playbook for the bird and how to best manage it to maximize livability and production, and all of those other sorts of things that are important to anyone's P&L (profit and loss statement). There's a lot more, but it's, it's an exciting area. And I'm sure there'll be more examples beyond those that I've mentioned.

Lavergne: I may have one from a completely different angle on artificial intelligence. Going back to the microbiome, there are platforms out there, and maybe still in their infancy, but being developed to take the microbiome data we get from our genetic sequencing, and go through an artificial intelligence platform with that, and give us an indication of what might be a dysbiosis situation or not, as well as use some machine learning to calculate, for an example, is that we've worked with a robustness index of the microbiome, which can help kind of give us an indication if that flock or that type of bird is going to be able to withstand a disease challenge or how they might respond. And I guess specifically, what we've been working with eubiosis or dysbiosis situations. It's taking that microbiome data we get, putting it through a platform and making some predictions. Obviously, we would like to have that fully developed. And I think that'll be an excellent tool in the future.

Tracy: AI is also an amazing tool to aid us in having a very successful cage free transition. Being able to collect data throughout our houses, not only will it be able to inform us of what aspects of design are much more beneficial for the bird and outcomes, as well as taking away a lot of that subjectivity that we see when we go into a house as a human and say, “What would I like to see here?” Which is not the right question, it's what would the bird like to see here? What's best for welfare? What's best for production? Us being able to track these microenvironments, bird movements, interactions and how they're actually consuming and producing within these houses will be something that will be very helpful in the future as we move forward.

O’Keefe: Well, I know anyone who's ever done simultaneous auditing, where you don't let the other person see your sheet, and then you come up with scores that aren't the same. That's the level of subjectivity. For anything you're doing, if you can reduce the level of error, or the range and be better at tracking what's really there.

Joshua, I know you've done some work in the past with early feeding of chicks. And now we've got an early feeding system, in the hatchery for turkeys that is commercialized in the United States. Will these systems really improve overall health outcomes? I mean, where do you think we are and where are we going with this?

Deines: Yeah, that's the big question. And if you walk the floor (at IPPE), you can see that at almost every incubator company or every nutrient company that's one of the buzzwords right now, early feeding. They're all talking about it. They all offer that option, because a lot of people are asking for it. But some of those that are asking for it are sometimes being told that that's what they should do from a welfare perceptive, or is it really a perception. And I think we need to go back to the data for insight.

What does this do for animal health? That's why we're all sitting up here on the panel today is what's next for the future of poultry health. And we need to think of what are those outcomes? When we've measured this in research, there's oftentimes a compensatory gain where those birds that are provided feed early, don't see that through to processing. So then what benefit does it provide? And then in working in the hatchery, one concern that we're always worried about is our pathogen exposure. So what pathogens are we bringing in, and one of the places we focus on so much is the tray wash, the hatch baskets, the hatcher and the associated ventilation with it. So now introducing a feed stuff or other products in there that might potentially carry a pathogen? How does that work with management? So there's this logistic piece, a pathogen component brought in as well.

But when we think about the bird, physiologically, it's got a yolk that's provided to it, and it can last for 72 hours post hatch. And so that that gut isn't always ready to switch from that endogenous nutrient source to an exogenous food source. It's previously going off of a lipid in the yolk and the now it's going to switch to a carbohydrate and protein in the feed, and it's not always ready.

The other concern is potentially, what does this do for uniformity, because we always talk about get the birds on feet as soon as possible to start growing. But as we know, the hatch doesn't occur simultaneously. There's a hatch window. We've got some birds start hatch, and then some that are later, therefore, they're getting access to that feed and water sooner. They may not be consuming it, then but they have access then. What does this do for uniformity within a flock? And in our research, we've seen that it doesn't necessarily cause a problem uniformity there. What's a bigger impact on uniformity is how wide that hatch window is, are dehydrated birds at the beginning, are green birds that are at the end of that hatch window. And even if we have an what we call an ideal or a tight hatch window, there are still differences physiologically and at hatch for those birds that hatch earlier on, versus later on. So, I think that it could be an option for some people to utilize. But, will we actually see a benefit for us here?

O’Keefe: I know when we spoke earlier, you said that there might be a better impact for birds that don't get delivered to the farm immediately. I know with most broiler complexes in the U.S., you've got a local hatchery. The chicks hatch early in the morning and they're all delivered to the farm that day. The turkey industry and the layer industry sometimes are a little different. Do you see a greater possibly a greater potential there?

Deines: Yeah, absolutely. This is an option for people. And I think that every situation dictates what they need. And this is a great one, we can't look at it as a blanket, this will help you get a faster growing bird get on feed sooner. When we look at a lot of the research, you mentioned the U.S. versus international are in different systems. In the United States, we're lucky we've got in ovo vaccination, we've got labor, our farms are close. So, we can pull, process, vaccinate, sort box and get those birds to the farm in as soon as you know, three, four hours, oftentimes sooner. But, then in other countries or other systems, travel is extended and that holding or fasting time, if you will, there might be more of a benefit.

And that's why I think there's such a perception issue that in this community. We need to really look at the data so if we look at the research early on said “hey, there's such a benefit to early feeding.” Their control groups are what in the United States broiler system we would consider a fasted bird because that holding time is so long, so there might be a benefit. But then a quick holding time, maybe not so much. So some systems there's a benefit. I think a lot more research needs to be divided into you know, the microbiome, the gut readiness and what feed stuffs are more ready for that bird at that stage in development.

Audience question: William you spoke about genomics being used to address certain diseases. And I know we all live in a commercial space, profit and loss, and development time are all critical. There's only a couple of these diseases, maybe coccidiosis and bursal disease that are kind of ubiquitous and, and stay around forever and a day, and we don't expect them to ever go away. So maybe there could be certain genomic selection for those particular diseases.

But I was wondering whether in your mind whether there was a payoff with some of these more, one off diseases, given the generational times that are required for you to develop a breed or a bird that has resistance to these various pathogens. And over and above that, I was wondering if there's any future like, to shorten the time to get these birds to the commercial space, in like, somewhat similar to the embryo transfer with cattle, where we take maybe harvest blastomeres or blastocyst? How far off do you think that that particular technology might be?

Herring: That's a lot. I'll try and tackle some of it. From a genetic selection perspective, I would suggest to you that when it comes to specific diseases, we haven't been very impactful. This isn't just specific to broilers, you know, cattle, dairy, beef, swine, there really are great examples where, from when it comes to resistance, and I'm going to break it between resistance and tolerance resistant.

The animal, you know, if it's a virus, doesn't get sick, doesn't shed virus, you can't pick up any incidence of the disease in the specific host. So we haven't had great success there. I think on the tolerant side, from a general robustness, I think we've had better success, particularly if we design breeding programs of a database with a data flow that is much more commercial, if we can submit animals and birds to commercial-like conditions with kind of typical disease prevalence,

I think we can impact that tolerance area more. The area that when it comes to specific diseases that I think is the most interesting probably crosses over from what I'd call a classical genetic improvement approach to something that's a bit different. And I'll give you just a very specific example. And I'll jump over to another species.

You know, today, PIC has the first PRRS resistant pig. And based on everything that's in the public domain, it is resistant to every different strain that we know of today. And that was done with a very specific approach using CRISPR-Cas9 and gene editing to find a region in the hosts that if you disrupt that region in the right way, then the pig doesn't get sick. That is honestly probably the most interesting technology and new bench technology that I think can tackle a lot of the very specific diseases. And it's obviously very highly researched today.

You know, it's an area we're interested in, and we're involved in, and monitoring very closely from a research perspective. We'll see where there's clearly a list of impactful diseases. We've got our target list. From top to bottom, I think it can solve those. I was honestly very skeptical on the PRRS thing when I first got involved and very surprised. I think it can yield some very surprising results. I think that's entire area when it comes to impacting host genetics from specific diseases has a high probability of success. Now, with all of that said, this might surprise you a little bit. I would much rather the industry come up with effective vaccines so that we can leave that genetic variation to select on other things. Honestly, that's the simplest and the most effective way to really be impactful.

You asked another question that was really kind of around reproductive technologies. We do have specific technologies that we can shorten the process of getting genes downstream. Today, they're very much still projects, and they would involve probably getting regulatory involved to deliver them downstream. And that has its own challenges. They're not as evident in poultry as they are in other species, you know, like cattle and swine that you can come up with, with easier models that don't involve that, to use advanced reproductive technologies to shorten the lag between the top of the pyramid to down at the customer level. But yeah, not nearly as easy answer to the question.

Audience question: Interaction between disease, genetics and vaccination? What do you see in the future? The tools being in that will help us create a rapid immune response, but reduce the energy or protein shift cost of the inflammatory or post inflammatory reaction? How do you see that evolving? Because I, personally, I think if we want vaccines or disease to work, we need a good immune response. We have to avoid the bird putting all that energy into that long term or uncontrolled response.

Deines: Lots of different approaches that can work for that you mentioned, it's kind of multifactorial there. From our perspective, on the vaccine side, it's generating immune responses protective, and for, say, our live vaccines, how can we make it less reactive? So getting the same immune response but less reactive? That's all about finding the right candidate, the right strain? And what is the challenge that the customer that flock has seen? Specifically with respiratory diseases where we might see reaction a lot. It's regionally specific, it's production specific and at what point in their life is it hitting.

It's always kind of this, this balance right of the whole back of vaccine program that customers on finding the right one. We're always trying to find the right vaccine candidate, and there are technologies and selecting that. We mentioned AI earlier, that's a potential place to implement that, with those strains, as well as certain CRISPR gene editing technologies to say produce a vaccine or a cell that generates is equal of immune response or protective level, but it's not as reactive.

We know the immune system is an energy demanding part of the bird. And so sometimes just preventing the disease in the first place is the best thing you could do, even though there's an immune consumption or calorie consumption of developing that immunity. So that's why earlier vaccination is often the best protecting against those immunosuppressive diseases. For bursal disease or Marek’s disease, we can vaccinate in ovo, where that bird then at three days of age has the same immuno competency of a seven day old bird that was vaccinated day of age. You get a bonus day there of that accelerated immune response because it was vaccinated in ovo. And then you're protecting against those immunosuppressive diseases that with, you know, snowball effect that calorie need for the immune system of the bird. 

Lavergne: I can come to that, from the nutrition and environmental perspective or the birds'  environmental perspective. We always want to feed our birds as optimum as possible as close to their nutrient requirements, because we definitely don't want them to overfeed something that their body has to take and digest and use energy for that.

We go back to the environment and keeping proper temperatures, humidities, airflow, so that bird is not using energy to regulate body temperature. It has to do some but not overdo that. And we want them to be in the best situation and to let them obtain optimum health, because we don't want that immune system over activated. We want them to use that energy for growth and muscle.

And it goes back to not having one tool, a big program, from our vaccines to our feeding programs. I liked the idea of the early feeding, getting the litter is generally thought of as first probiotic which is not always a good thing. If we can at least start colonizing that gut early with some good bacteria, again, we can help them maybe easily respond or avoid some challenges they might have. It's just the overall message is it's a program, not one individual tool.

Tracy: This is especially important for layers. And I always feel the need to defend the honor of layers, on these panels, especially amongst so many of my broiler colleagues. Layers are designed to produce eggs; they're not designed to put on meat. When we see them go into a deficit or an inflammatory response in the field, it can be very hard to get these high-efficiency breeds out of that rut, and to return them to production. I think it's very important that we keep encouraging our colleagues in genetics, to make sure that we're hitting that balance correctly, where we're getting a very high efficiency burn that has good health outcomes, but also is one that we're able to feed appropriately and economically, to a level where they're able to balance their own internal needs against those protein production, even when it's not their own muscle mass.

Lavergne: I guess with what you've said, I kind of missed one thing, the inflammation process and we do have compounds that we can feed that are anti-inflammatory that definitely are another tool in our big toolbox to help the growth and production and reducing challenges.

O’Keefe: The U.S. poultry industry has invested a lot of money since 2015 on improving farm biosecurity, hatchery biosecurity, because of the tremendous impact of HPAI on the industry. One of the side benefits of that should be that infectious diseases of other kinds are reduced. Linnea, I know the layer farms are the ones that have done the most work because you have so many birds concentrated in one area and you have if there's a processing facility on site, you have a rather large labor force that comes in every day. So, are we seeing health improvements in our laying on our line farms as a result of some of this increased biosecurity?

Tracy: Absolutely, we’ll go to the other AI hot button issue apart from artificial intelligence. Since 2015, we have seen significant improvements in both biosecurity mentalities, performance and infrastructure investments in the industry. Those outcomes are evident even among avian influenza situations.

We've seen a significant decrease in lateral spread amongst effective premises. And that's the number one indicator that what we're doing is working. We're providing accountability, and we're actually acting on our plans and not just writing them down and having something more in writing.

With that being said, I do think that we're seeing reductions in negative health outcomes. A lot of this is going to be retrospective, as we look back into the past, especially on individual complexes with individual companies, because we see such a diversity in our production styles, and disease climates across the country. Some of those places we might see changes that are most evident are in places where we have disease challenges that result from outdoor access. We've seen that reduced in the past couple years, as well as people bringing things in spreading things amongst complexes, and tighter control of these multi age complexes, which are a hallmark of the U.S. egg industry, but are very challenging for biosecurity even on a daily basis when we're not in red alert biosecurity mode.

We still see disease spread in the labor industry to an extent that all of us would like to mitigate. A good example of that would be coryza. And we see that marching through the Midwest right now. We're seeing a lot of it in Ohio. And that's an area that's also been hit with AI. It's an area that is very well acquainted with excellent egg production, and biosecurity. So, when we look at these outcomes later, it'll be interesting to look at this data and drill down more on what we can do and what we haven't done that can improve our responses in the future and even take the next few steps in the next five years and the next seven years to prevent our next disease disasters.

However, we also need to refocus on the disease biology of the individual agents that we're trying to address. So, apples to oranges coryza is not avian influenza, viruses are not bacteria, how we spread one disease is not how we spread the others. And we can't put everything into the same box;, we also have to work within the limitations of our industry standards and infrastructure and demands. There's a lot more we can do. And it's going to take drilling down into the data, really looking retrospectively at the changes we've made and what the changes we haven't seen as a result of those in order to inform our future actions.

O’Keefe: I know I've talked to some veterinarians and they've stressed that the real thing is, once the epidemic or that challenge is gone, we have to keep up what we were doing. What was explained to me was that shower in shower out works great until it's minus 20 degrees in Iowa, and someone left a pack of cigarettes behind.

Tracy: No one wants their hair to freeze in minus seven-degree weather. But yes, this can't become just a window decoration, right, or biosecurity science can't just become wall art. It takes constant action. And we are seeing a lot of exhaustion in the industry. It's emotionally exhausting for all of our producers to go through this climate of high stress, fear, really sad outcomes in some situations. And it's difficult on the folks that we asked to do difficult jobs, even the best of times day in day out hard hours, hard work, and then to come in and have this level of stress and oversight, and us reminding them about the stakes every single day.

I think there are ways that we can work towards making this a more naturalized climate for everyone. And I think in the future, as we become more comfortable, this we change our infrastructure, we change our daily practices, it won't seem so stressful to us, because we won't have as much comparison to the before times that we've seen prior to AI.

O'Keefe: Okay, so this is I'm going to toss this one to the whole panel. Is there a significant poultry health challenge that you think will be conquered? Or at least generally subdued in the next decade? And if so, what is it? And how do you think it'll be resolved or contained?

Tracy: No one wants to go first on this. So I'll just do it. My deepest earnest hope is that we see a resolution or at least a significant reduction in the worries and the continual outbreaks we've been seeing of avian influenza in the past couple years. We do see, traditionally a shift in viral genetic patterns over the course of outbreaks. This specific virus has been very interesting as it's been well adapted to both its wild hosts, as well as directly into poultry to is very disturbing. We see a lot of it in the environment.

There's a constant concern, are we living with this now? Is it going to change and move back and forth? I do think that at some point, we will see a break in our current status quo, whether that means we're able to pursue vaccination on a global level, whether that means the virus changes to a point where it's not quite the same situation we're at here. And I don't have the crystal ball for you to give you that answer. But I don't think it'll last for another decade, at least, I certainly hope it won't.

Herring: I don't know that I can give you the specific disease that I'd wager on. I do think that we will have some nice surprises. And probably a decade is a pretty good window to look at. We've already talked about this morning, the utilization of AI and computational biology with respect to understanding and trying to identify targets in the host that are higher likelihoods to be disruptors. And we've already talked about an example of that. And that's quickly evolving. We have other species that now are entering into final phases of regulatory approval. And if there's commercial market acceptance, we'll see that and pork here over the next year. I do think that that we will see breakthroughs around resistance that will surprise us whether it's avian influenza, that's a tough one, whether it's salmonella, or any of those other on down the list. I do. I wish I was smart enough to know which one it was going to be or more than one, but I think across livestock in general, and with respect to impacting disease, we'll see this across multiple species.

Deines: I've got a pretty optimistic view on that, I guess. Right now, there's a lot of diseases we're like, man, this seems like it's going to be forever. And avian influenza is one, because it is what we've noticed this last year, it didn't show its seasonal characteristics, what it has in the past, where we we've got this complete down summer where it leaves whether that's due to weather migration patterns, concentration, and this year, it's stuck around. So, that's maybe one that we're a little more worried about.

Optimistically there are vaccine technologies that are increasing. And so that's one of the best ways to protect against any viral pathogen is the vaccine. And we've seen some successes, multiple people have manufactured vaccines, it's worked in certain scenarios. Policy is maybe one hurdle that has to be jumped in that case. But for example, at Zoetis, we've created an avian influenza vaccine and put it in the California condor to protect an endangered bird. That's one use case scenario. And can that be used in a commercial setting, potentially.

But if we were to go back, 50 years or more, there were diseases that were just as similar at the forefront of people's minds. Marek’s disease is a great example. At the time, it was horrific, whether its mortality, and then beyond that, the sheer loss from condemnation at the processing plant, because the tumors and those kinds of things. But with the advent of the vaccine for that disease, it was realized this it is an attackable challenge, and at the time, it maybe didn't seem like it would ever be a non-concern.

But today, we almost do see it like that. It's something that we take for granted. And it's that challenge that has been overcome. Then when we couple that with other technologies to utilize the techniques such as in ovo vaccination, we further reduce the incidence of that. So where do we go next? Well, Marek’s is still out there. We don't see it as much in condemnations or tumors where we have to trim out that carcass. But what we do see is subclinical right in those high-challenge areas that think that, “hey, we can avoid Marek’s. You know, we're not in high-challenge area, we're going to maybe not vaccinate or pay as much attention to it.” And then that subclinical (infection) results in the immunosuppressive characteristics of Marek’s impacting the feed conversion.

In some instances, it’s just going back to the basics for all disease prevention, and those things that are really curable, or we have the answers for, we need to take advantage of those technologies. And then those ones that we haven't tackled yet, I think we use those lessons learned for that. An example of this is our Salmonella and E. coli, which were mentioned before, is a huge focus area, both for vaccine companies and from a food safety perspective, from the human illness perspective, that's where the focus is. There are vaccines available.

Lavergne: I too, am not going to make any bets. And then you just told me that there's diseases that are never going away. But if I want to pick a specific problem that I think we should be able to take care of is necrotic enteritis, and we know a lot about it. Maybe we should already be able to handle it, but it's never going to go away, I guess. We know a lot of the factors that result in necrotic enteritis. We have a lot of tools out there, we use to try to combat it and prevent it. So that's just one specific example, I think we should be able to make a lot of progress in. And that's obviously a huge worldwide issue.

O'Keefe: Now, we talked a little bit about CRISPR. William, maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought there was more of a challenge in avian species than there was with mammals, because of the techniques you have to do if you're working on the embryo. I think you alluded to that there might be more of a problem with birds. Why is that?

Herring: It is a bit more challenging, but it can be overcome. I don't view it today as being a bottleneck to R&D associated with CRISPR, and specifically disease. I won't go into the details, but it is a little bit simpler in pork and beef to utilize the technology in it. And it really is about getting ultimately that the delivery of a host edited genome into a working bird that you can further procreate. I won't go off go off into that, but I don't view it as a as a bottleneck today.

There are avenues to get all of that done. It's a very interesting area. CRISPR is one of those that I'd have to go back to my notes but CRISPR-Cas9 has been just a little bit more than a decade since Jennifer Doudna introduced it and the IP associated with it. I don't know that I've ever seen a technology get implemented across humans, crops, livestock and have such an impact so fast. It’s going to be a part of our future in terms of how we tackle lots of things. I think going forward not just in the world I work in every day. It will impact deliverables around vaccines and other pharmaceuticals. Just about anything we touch.

O'Keefe: One of the challenges coming up for the industry are net zero pledges. We have some broiler companies that have made them, we have the customers of our broiler and egg companies that have made pledges that they want to be net zero by 2050. Do you have any thoughts on how changing the feedstuffs in the diet could change the type of feed additives or probiotics that we're going to wind up using? Most of the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from poultry production are associated with raising the crops, whether we fertilize them and everything else we do. And so there are regenerative agricultural techniques that can allow you to produce the crops where you are net zero, and in some cases supposedly even negative, sequestering carbon. Do you know something about where is this going?  Obviously, we'd be changing enzymes potentially, depending on what the feedstuffs are, but are there other factors?

Lavergne: I believe the industry for years has been doing things to minimize negative effects on the environment. And when we look at nutrition, we can use less soybean meal and go back in the diet with some crystalline and amino acids. You don't have extra excretion there, you reduce nitrogen excretion. It goes back to trying to feed as close to the nutrient requirements as possible, again, so there's no extra. And you know, we use phase feeding programs, but the industry and then formulating diets, we use least cost formulation, which when we look at grains, this may bring in some grain sources that are not as digestible as maybe corn. Then we add the enzymes and the industries helping in that way.

They're doing lots of things to reduce the negative effects on the environment, not that they're doing everything. And there's always technology. Now go back to the probiotic strains, some of those produce enzymes to help with digestion as well. It may be hard to get to that net zero. Maybe costs are going to go up some with the example of the different feedstuffs and maybe not being able to do as much least cost formulating, you might have to do some kind of cost or our analysis on digestibility. More so and how much of each grain source we can use to reduce or how much would increase or decrease the rate of digestibility, I guess, or increased digestibility and less excretion. So it's, it's a huge program.

I believe the industry has been doing a lot for a long time. There's always ways to improve. And then we have genetics, just amazing, we can feed less and less every day and produce just as much meat or eggs. I have done some layer work, too. So we've moved in the great direction. We just are seen as a huge industry. The perception is that we're doing not as much as we are.

Tracy: I'd love to piggyback on that whenever we have carbon conversations in the poultry industry. I like to emphasize to folks that we need to brag on the gains that we have made. We have come so far, both chicken meat as well as eggs are the some of the most sustainable animal proteins that you could possibly get, especially in the United States with all the advances we've made.

In terms of water consumption, carbon excretion, we're using local grains in these diets. So even with shipping, carbon sources have really been minimized. But beyond that, there's so much more that we can do. And I see folks doing amazing things on their own farms, whether that be covered crops, responsible manure allocation, getting involved in their local communities, in terms of watersheds and understanding these things, communicating the industry's needs back to and finding healthy compromises both for the planet as well as for our industry.

There are a lot of things I think that we can be doing specifically even on the macro ingredients side and I see some of these projects coming forward. They’re traditional agronomy, they're moving crops a little bit towards on and beyond, just saying this is our carbohydrate source, this is our protein source and trying to move almost into a consensus space. You're packing more and more into one ingredient, which means less and less shipping, it means less space. Hopefully that's mirroring what we've been seeing in genetics, where we put in more and more technology to use less and less inputs and get more and more out.

It's a really exciting time. I think that our diets will change significantly in the future. Our genetics have a lot to do with this. Every year, we see them get more and more competitive, both improving the birds' welfare with their diets, as well as the outcomes. There's a lot going on in this space. And I'm really excited to see where we take it. It's a positive story, even though we do have a big footprint in the U.S.

Herring: I don't have a lot specific to add other than as the industry changes and evolves when it comes to the inputs and feedstuffs. We will grow and expose the bird from a genetic perspective to those same environments, so that we're sure we're making the progress that we think that we're going to make that works with the evolving industry.

For example, we just announced our proving grounds complex is up and going. It's ia very focused effort on exactly that to be sure we're selecting our birds under real-world conditions. It's basically in a setup, we've got 40,000 parents stock females and the associated males producing the underlying broilers at about 100,000 a week down below that. And it is going to be commercial conditions, commercial feedstuff, inputs, whatever those may be today, and 10 years from now. I think my response would be we will evolve and select and create a bird that works as best in those conditions as possible.

Tracy: This is a really exciting area, and that that brings up a great point, this is going to become even more normal. So even when we think about least cost formulation, what does cost mean, in the future to our producers? Is it just the dollars and cents that go into our feed mills? Or is it the cost for the carbon that they're putting on the bottom line for their publicly traded corporations. Those will go into the decisions you make. Seeing them being acted upon from the very beginning, before we get the birds all the way through the end of the feed mill and processing. It's amazing.

Deines: A lot of the different supporting industries are all trying to tackle the same thing. From a bird health perspective, we've got this genetic selection that has the potential for that bird and the efficiency that they have in feed conversion, and we could calculate the feedstuffs to really maximize that. And then there's all the unknown factors that come in that maybe we're not maximizing that so you know, our disease challenge.

And just to reiterate on the vaccine impact that that can make for feed conversion ratio and efficiency of the bird, those immunosuppressive diseases that you don't think they're infected, but they have a little bit going through them that is reducing their efficiency. And that's probably what we take for granted. And where our species probably has the advantage over some of the other protein sources, is the fact that we are so efficient, both for the meat and the egg, per protein and nutrient output to a consumer, just maximizing what's already there foundationally through genetics, by feeding, by vaccine. I think we're all trying to pursue that.

Audience question: This is a question that relates to a specific health pathogen like Enterococcus, that it's one of those agents that has been considered as a normal gut flora, but then over the years has evolved to become very pathogenic again, causing problems. It was always there. I remember about 10-15 years ago, when it became an issue for a commercial industry. What has happened in regard to the pathogen that has been in the gut now suddenly becoming a problem? And then as we go, it becomes more of an issue. Do you think it's management, nutrition pressure at the commercial breeder and broilers causing that evolution? I know at that time, there was pointing fingers admitted, their breeds are more susceptible whether bacteria came from higher up, down. What do you think?

Herring: I don't have a great answer for you. It's probably better targeted for an epidemiologist. To probably shed some greater light on it. Specifically, what you reference is a topic of conversation weekly. Within the groups I interact with is the pressure all of those dynamics you mentioned. I really don't have a great answer for you, other than it is high on our disease target list, regardless of how we can impact it, whether it's through genetics or outside of genetics. I am very much a firm believer in selecting birds in environments that with diseases that are prevalent, and that is one. The proving grounds that I mentioned, it'll have all of the normal challenges that we're seeing, certainly in the U.S. today, in which we'll be evaluating birds under to see if there are responses and variation of tolerance. If I had the specific answer to your question, I'd be way ahead this morning.

Lavergne: I have limited experience within enterococcus, specifically cecorum out in the field with some customers and the way that we're trying to tackle it is looking at different probiotics to see if we can inhibit that pathogen. But things I've tended to see in the field is it's repeat farms and across genetics. I don't have the answer either, but it is something we're working on.

Deines: And I don't know if I could speak to the increase in pathogenicity of it specifically, but it's kind of multifactorial. When we see this in the field a lot sometimes it is neglecting the basic principles of management, that has allowed it to become more problematic because it is opportunistic in nature, and although it's maybe more pathogenic, with some strains, or in some situations, these repeat farms, I agree are sometimes the biggest cause of the problem.

If you couple that with maybe a situation where they have poor management altogether, they've got the enterococcus, they probably also have lower eggshell quality than their peers coming into the hatchery. And then if you don't have good sanitation to the hatchery, now, it becomes problematic for your chicks. And they're already starting with that. So going back to the basics of good sanitation and husbandry is probably the best way to tackle in our caucus.

Tracy: I agree. From a veterinarian perspective, I think that it's a combination of we've been selecting, not just our birds, we also select what happens in their environment, and especially when we reuse litter. And we have the same types of management patterns over that time. You're narrowing populations to those that thrive the best in those conditions. When we do things like we neglect management patterns, what we're doing is we're selecting darker, nastier bugs that are going to come out and bite us later. We see this on the layer side, too. We have nasty E. coli (strains) that emerge and we see them on repeat farms will have nasty gallibacterium emerge, and we'll see them on repeat farms. It's a comprehensive approach you have to take, I think, If anyone finds the overall answer to that they'll have the winning presentation at AAAP this year.

O'Keefe: Yes, to your point, we always have to remember that we're competing against those organisms. They're changing, and they've evolved to survive, and they're going to change with the environment. And we have to try and stay ahead of it.

Tracy: They're even competing for calories and our feed ingredients and our nutrients. From a micro perspective, to a macro perspective, it's us against whatever is trying to inhibit the birds for sure.

Audience question: On that point, do you think artificial intelligence will help us in our strategies in selecting what we work for, to avoid these types of problem where I think we are getting very good at Salmonella and E. Coli. But Enterococcus is probably taking advantage of the strategies were using against E. Coli and Salmonella and filling the void that nature doesn't like to be empty.

Tracy: We're one of the most data heavy industries out there and we collect data on everything. We have statistics, we have point scores. We have meetings every week where we look at these. I really do think that there is a pool of data that we can leverage in that sort of big data artificial intelligence way in order to give us more insights into how these are evolving. I'm sure that our colleagues in innovation and sciences are already starting to do this. I think that it's something we know that we can even embrace on a producer level with the type of data that we have on our paperwork and our controllers in the houses every day. Trends are there. We just have to take the time to see them. I'm not totally sure what they are for enterococcus right now. But I do think that we'll be able to see them in the future.

O'Keefe: I'd like to thank all of you for joining us this morning and please join me in thanking our panel for participants. Thanks again to Ceva, Cobb-Vantress, Natural Biologics, Targan and Zoetis for sponsoring this panel discussion. We hope that you enjoyed the inaugural Future of Poultry podcast and will join WATT editors as we continue the discussion and explore what's next for the global poultry industry.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.