The Present and Future Utilization of Biotechnology in the Feed Industry: a Poultry Nutritionist’s Perspective

The next decade will be an extremely exciting time for agriculture and the feed industry. The production of genetically enhanced plants, feed additives, and foods will affect our lives in many ways. Biotechnology will greatly affect the field of medicine, environmental protection, food production, and agriculture. The focus of this presentation will be to summarize the present and potential agronomic and value-added feedstuffs that will become commercially available in the near future. Scientist and CEO’s involved in plant and animal production are routinely discussing their research or business’s using terms such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, genetically modified organisms(GMO’s), transgenic, recombinant DNA, and “value added” plants and products. What do these terms mean? Are the new high oil corn varieties transgenic? What will government agencies require regarding labeling for these different products. Hopefully, we can discuss the cereal and legume grains that have “value added” traits that are commercially available at the present time and also discuss new cultivars that will be commercially available in the near future. The advantages of using modern biotechnology for the production of animal feeds will be apparent for everyone from the farmer to the consumer.