Two University of Guelph food scientists who believe it is only a matter of time before antibiotics are banned from poultry feed claim they have found a solution: give birds a taste of their own medicine.
Yoshinori Mine and Zeina Ghattaskassaify have discovered that adding powdered egg yolks to poultry diets can help stop disease and the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by eliminating or preventing harmful pathogens from colonizing in the intestines of birds and spreading to humans.
“We discovered just feeding five percent normal egg yolk powder to chickens can prevent salmonella infection in poultry, and also if the flock already has infection by salmonella or campylobacter, we can eliminate these pathogens by feeding this supplement,” Mine said.
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E. coli could also be controlled in this manner, he added.
The secret ingredient, Mine told the University of Guelph Research News, is something called granule proteins, a major component of egg yolks. As powdered egg yolk is digested, granule proteins are reduced to smaller protein components known as peptides. These peptides eliminate pathogens from the chicken by attaching to the bacteria and making them vulnerable to natural breakdown in the bird’s intestinal tract.
Results of Mine’s field trials over the past three years using powdered egg yolks have shown the same results time after time: food is safe against these harmful pathogens in poultry meat and eggs.
“It works well, actually,” Mine said. “The only problem we have to solve is the economical impact. It’s still a little expensive.”
The discovery is timely, given that poultry producers will soon be looking for an antibiotic-free solution to fighting disease, Mine said. Antibiotics have been widely used as a preventive measure to curtail the presence of infection-inducing bacteria in chicken and egg production, but increasing health concerns about the spread of antimicrobial resistance in pathogens have made their use objectionable.
“In Canada we already have a serious problem in terms of antibiotic-resistant strains of these pathogens,” Mine said, adding that the European Union will completely ban antibiotics as feed additives by 2012.
He said that more than 70 percent of poultry meat in Canada contains campylobacter bacteria, which are responsible for the majority of acute cases of human campylobacterosis, or food poisoning. Salmonella also causes food poisoning and gastroenteritis, or inflammation of the intestinal tract.
These illnesses can cause diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever in humans within two to five days after exposure to the bacteria if they have handled contaminated raw poultry meat or eaten meat or eggs when improperly cooked or undercooked.
E. coli is another major origin of foodborne disease in humans and is the leading cause of acute renal failure in children. Though infection from this bacteria is more commonly associated with contaminated water, undercooked ground beef and unpasteurized milk, Mine said in one of his reports that concern has been expressed about the potential risk to human health should E. coli become as established in poultry as other pathogens have.
Mine believes the yolk powder could also benefit the hog industry, helping to eliminate salmonella and E. coli bacteria.
The University of Guelph has applied for a patent on the feed supplement and has licensed it to a Canadian poultry company.
“We have many contacts from the EU, South America, Japan, but so far we offered the priority to a local Canadian company to develop (the product),” Mine said.
“We are now working together to … bring this idea to the farm level.”
