H2020 HEALTHSTOCK Project: Forage for healthier animals and improved livestock production

The Healthstock project is part of the livestock feed market. The main problem currently facing the feed industry is that animals, forced to grow, develop disproportionately large digestive systems to process forage. These overdeveloped organs, in turn, are unprotected systems, more vulnerable to digestive diseases.

This deficiency is compensated for by the extensive use of preventative drugs and antibiotics. Consequently, animals suffer more, producers spend more, butchers earn less, and consumers pay more for lower-quality, drug-treated food due to this unnatural situation.

In this context, a significant market opportunity arises for feed enhancers. These products are combined with traditional feed, improving animal health and, consequently, reducing the incidence of disease.

Currently, there are two types of enhancers on the market that complement common feed and improve feed digestibility, producing benefits for the animal's body:

• Probiotics (based on live bacteria):
  They have dominated the European market, with great potential for activity but identified as additives by regulation (expensive trials are required to demonstrate that they have no negative impact) and with highly variable effectiveness due to storage stability issues.
  
• Fermented prebiotics (based on dead bacteria):
  They have dominated the North American market. They don't have the drawbacks of live bacteria, but they are less effective than probiotics.

PENTABIOL has developed and tested PROBISAN, a postbiotic enhancer (both probiotic and prebiotic) that outperforms any other feed enhancer on the market.
PROBISAN is the product resulting from the fermentation process of a joint culture of lactic bacteria and yeast.

Due to its similar behavior to that of a probiotic and a prebiotic, it significantly benefits animal health, achieving the dual objective of improving farm production results and progressively reducing the use of medications.

The resulting microorganisms bind to a plant substrate. After ingestion of this substrate, the microorganisms' action in the digestive system begins, taking the form of metabolites (including organic acids such as lactic and acetic acids, and various B vitamins). These metabolites are generated during the successive liquid and solid, aerobic and anaerobic fermentations to which the product is subjected. These metabolites are capable of inactivating the starter microorganisms through desiccation in the final solid fermentation.

Its uniqueness, compared to similar products, lies in its high efficiency, determined by the fermentation process, since the set of microorganisms it contains, in addition to the positive effect on metabolism, promotes the establishment and growth of microflora in the digestive tract of animals, regulating and stabilizing the conditions of digestion.

Its presentation and registration comply with the current Commission Regulation (EU) No. 68/2013 of 16 January 2013 on the catalogue of raw materials for animal feed, in the Glossary of treatments, point 28, which details that fermented feed is the procedure in which microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi or yeast are produced or used to act on raw materials in order to promote a change in their composition/chemical properties.

The overall objective of the HEAKTHSOCK project is to introduce PROBISAN to the main global reference markets for livestock feed.

As part of the commercialization plan to introduce and market PROBISAN globally, this project aims to introduce it to key global markets, which will boost its introduction to other markets in a later commercialization phase.

According to the marketing plan, the specific objectives and the work carried out to achieve each of them have been the following:

Objective 1: Product
1.1 Development of the product range

Objective 2: Promotion
2.1 Demonstration of effectiveness in the main global reference markets (Spain, Italy, Germany, Peru, United States, Morocco and China)
2.2 Communication and dissemination of demonstration results among stakeholders

Objective 3: Distribution