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Chicken Antibodies to the Rescue

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

European farmers are suffering. What with Foot and Mouth disease, Mad Cow disease, low prices for their products, the rise of corporate farming, and high prices for their fuel and equipment these farmers are gradually being squeezed out of their economies. This is not good. A country that can't feed itself is, in my opinion, a country that is in trouble.

Farmers have for over 50 years raised their animals by placing antibiotics in their feed. The antibiotics reduce the bacteria in the gut (gastrointestinal tract) of the animals. The presence of bacteria in the animal's intestines cause the animal to mount an immune response. This low level immune response requires energy. The energy used to mount this immune response slows the growth of the animals, lowers their appetites, and causes the animal's muscles to be smaller. If animals are grown in a germ-free environment they will grow 10-15 percent faster. Therefore, if the number of bacteria in the animal's gut are lowered less feed will generate a larger animal in a shorter time giving the farmer more money per animal raised. This efficiency is very hard to give up in trying financial times.

Unfortunately, some studies have shown that by using antibiotics in animal feed antibiotic resistant bacteria increase in numbers. These resistant bacteria do not stay in the animals but can also get into humans making it difficult to treat if the bacteria causes an infection in a person. As a result, Europe has banned the use of antibiotics in animal feeds. Steps are also being taken in the United States to reduce or remove antibiotics from animal feed as well.

This is a real economic problem for farmers who are already very stressed financially. However, out of the gloom comes a ray of hope. A product that may be released by this fall (2001) may do the same thing that antibiotics do in speeding animal growth without the use of antibiotics.

The product called Ovation^TM was developed in the lab of Mark E. Cook at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It contains antibodies to cholecystokinin (CCK), a gut peptide important in regulating appetite. When fed to chickens and swine, Ovation^TM was shown to enable maximum utilization of the diet, resulting in improved weight gain and feed efficiency. In other words these animals became more efficient at converting feed to meat and got larger faster.

When animals are mounting an immune response to bacteria in their guts they make hormones that release small proteins into the gut that control how hungry it feels. CCK causes the animal to feel full and they quit eating. By placing antibodies to CCK in the feed they animals do not feel full

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