Animistic's Clay Partnership

In this episode of the Real P3 Podcast, host Casey Bradley is joined by Nathan Hillis from Profile Animal Health and Michael Ballou from NB Nutritional Sciences. Together, they discuss their respective journeys in the livestock industry and highlight collaborative efforts in developing innovative technologies for livestock health management
Key Learnings:Guest Backgrounds:
·       Nathan Hillis: Director of Sales and Marketing at Profile Animal Health, Nathan started his career at Cargill Animal Nutrition and worked with Nutriad and Norel before joining Profile. He brings a wealth of experience in feed additives, organic acids, and clays.
·       Mike Blue (Michael Ballou): Professor and Chair of the Department of Veterinary Sciences at Texas Tech University, Mike specializes in nutritional immunology. He co-owns MB Nutritional Sciences and has extensive experience in research and practical applications within the livestock industry.
Gut Health and Mycotoxins:
·       Defining Gut Health: Mike explains gut health as the ability to prevent toxins and pathogens without triggering inflammation. He stresses the importance of maintaining a balanced microbial environment in livestock.
·       Understanding Mycotoxins: Originating from fungi, mycotoxins pose significant risks to livestock health. Mike and Nathan discuss the broader impacts of multiple mycotoxins and the need for proactive, beyond-regulatory measures.
Mitigation Strategies:
·       Regulatory Challenges: The conversation highlights the U.S. regulatory landscape and its limitations regarding mycotoxin binding. Emphasizing the importance of proactive measures, the speakers advocate for better strategies to safeguard animal health.
·       Effectiveness of Clays: The selection and use of clay products, such as PowerGuard, for mycotoxin binding and bacterial prevention are discussed. The efficacy of these products is demonstrated in controlling toxins and enhancing gut health.
Product Applications:
·       PowerGuard: A detailed discussion on PowerGuard's role in mitigating aflatoxins, managing mycotoxins, and maintaining nutrient digestibility. Practical applications in livestock feed and its benefits in different livestock settings are examined.
·       Innovative Practices: Highlighting the use of clay products in water mitigation and bacterial prevention, this conversation underscores the commitment to advancing livestock health.
Insights on Livestock Management:
·       Preventive Approaches: Emphasis on the critical role of preventive measures in gut health and toxin management.
·       Enhancing Animal Welfare: The significant impact of innovative products like PowerGuard on modern animal nutrition practices, emphasizing disease prevention and overall health improvement.

The episode concludes with reflections on the role of innovation in improving livestock management practices, enhancing disease prevention, and ensuring overall animal welfare. Expert insights from Nathan Hillis and Mike Blue provide a comprehensive view of the nutritional and immunological landscape, underscoring the importance of advancing technology and innovation in the livestock industry.

To learn more about Profile Animal Health and their products, visit: https://profileanimalhealth.com/

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www.thesunswinegroup.com

Transcript

Casey
0:00:00
Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast. Every Thursday, join the animistic team as we showcase how innovation drives solutions in animal nutrition and business. Dive into groundbreaking developments and practical insights across all livestock and

Casey
0:00:20
pet species.

Casey
0:00:21
Tune in where science plus heart empowers transformative solutions. Hello and welcome to the Real P3 podcast. I got two wonderful people with me. I have Nathan Hillis and Mike Blue from Profile and NB Nutritional Sciences. Nathan, would you mind telling the audience a little bit about yourself and your background?

Nathan
0:00:47
I'm Nathan Hillis with Profile Products. I'm actually director of sales and marketing for animal health division. Kind of a little bit about me Casey is I started in 2006 with Cargill Animal Nutrition. Kind of how I cut my teeth into the to the feed industry. Then transitioned from that in 2012 to the feed additives industry working for a company called Nutriad. I was selling flavors and one of the biggest claims to fame in my career was the introduction of sodium butyrate within the poultry industry.

Nathan
0:01:20
So moved from there and ended up with Profile about three years ago, selling their clays or bringing their clays to market for animal health and animal nutrition purposes.

Casey
0:01:34
I can't believe it's been three years, Nathan.

Casey
0:01:37
I know. It's been a journey. Mike, would you introduce yourself and give us a little bit about your background to our

Casey
0:01:44
audience?

Mike
0:01:45
Yeah. Thanks, Casey. Probably a lot of you don't know me or don't even know who I am, but I grew up in the Central Valley of California and my father owned a vitamin and mineral premix company and kind of grew up in the dairy industry. I went up to UC Davis, studied animal nutrition and stayed there and got a PhD in nutritional immunology.

Mike
0:02:04
And in 2007, after I graduated, I moved to Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, and have been on faculty at Texas Tech since then. And still currently on faculty there and actually the department chair of the Department of Veterinary Sciences. My brother and I started a company, MB Nutritional Sciences, back in 2014, 2015, and have been working with Profile since 2017 on developing and bringing this technology to market in livestock.

Mike
0:02:35
I think that's what we're here today is to talk about that technology.

Casey
0:02:38
Well, you went to one of the best universities for immunology.

Mike
0:02:43
I did. I actually worked quite a bit with Kirk Claising there. I always tell people I took a lot of Kirk's philosophies and that he applied to the broiler chick industry and just applied it to dairy cattle and made a pretty good career doing that.

Casey
0:02:58
So we've had kind of an opposite career. I took the, from my PhD and stuff, a lot of the work done in the dairy cow and translated

Casey
0:03:06
it to the pig.

Nathan
0:03:07
So there you go.

Casey
0:03:09
Yep.

Casey
0:03:10
So there is opportunities to learn from other species, but let's start off a little bit more about Profile because I guess that's a company that we also don't hear about every day out there in the world, but you've probably stepped on some of the products throughout most people's life if they do some outdoor sports. So Nathan, give us a little bit background on Profile.

Nathan
0:03:33
So Profile started as a company back in the 80s. A few guys went together and bought a clay company out of Blue Mountain, Mississippi. And that clay company was the foundation of Profile, right? And they were servicing clays to the sports field industry somewhat. But Profile saw an opportunity for these clays to be used in the golf industry, not only in the sports field, the golf side.

Nathan
0:03:59
there, Profile has grown its industry or grown its reach into multiple industries, not just the sports field and golf, but also in erosion control, the solar industry. And now we're, Profile's stepping off into the animal health side. What Profile prides itself on is bringing education and new technologies to the industries it serves. You would think clays are a very simple thing. Well, you know, clays are very complex, especially when you're

Nathan
0:04:31
using it in soil amendments. Here in animal health, we see differences in clays everywhere. So, profile is really on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to clay development and clay processing. So, they're excited to bring that to the animal health and animal nutrition industries. And Mike, give us a little bit more of a background of this business that you and your brother started and kind of where you serve and kind of what you have in development because I'm

Casey
0:05:01
assuming profile is just a little component of what you do.

Mike
0:05:05
Yeah.

Mike
0:05:06
So, my brother was in the dairy industry and a lot of people I know and a lot of friends are in the dairy industry. And a lot of my research program has always been kind of focused on gut health. And my brother, those of you in the dairy industry, he raised Jersey animals and milked Jersey cows, but with that you get Jersey calves. And they're notoriously difficult to raise and temperamental.

Mike
0:05:30
And so we just started looking at a few different technologies and actually our company really started with two direct fed microbials that I was fermenting in my lab, and then also an oral electrolyte solution to help treat scours or diarrhea and kind of keep calves hydrated. And really that company's grown in the last 10 years to, you know, we do a lot of custom manufacturing for people. We try to bring, I would say we're kind of a research and development. I try to understand ingredients and then we blend those ingredients in proprietary blends with a lot of our focus being on improving gastrointestinal health of animals and by

Mike
0:06:11
doing so also improving feed efficiency. And so we have probably over 30 to 50 different SKUs if you start including some of the custom manufacturing and we employ over 30 different people probably across the US either in Lubbock where we do most of our manufacturing, then we also have sales people kind of scattered throughout the US that work

Casey
0:06:33
with our regional distributors. That is really cool and I hope to be that big maybe in 10 years as well, but we'll see. But before we jump into the discussion around mycotoxins, you mentioned gut health and so I love to ask all the experts I can, what is their definition of gut health?

Mike
0:06:56
Yeah, that's a really good question. So let me try to do it in a simple way. The way I look at the gastrointestinal tract is it's probably one of the, that and the respiratory tract are the primary ways your body is exposed to,

Mike
0:07:11
I'm gonna call them potential pathogens or toxins from the environment. So the goal of the gastrointestinal tract is to digest and absorb nutrients into the body, but also keep things that shouldn't be in the body outside of the body. And so the gastrointestinal tract, since it's being constantly exposed to potential pathogens and toxins, the classic response is you want to have an inflammatory response to recruit immune cells to that site to try to block it off and keep things from getting there.

Mike
0:07:42
The problem with inflammation is that it also causes what we would consider leaky gut. And so what we want to do is we want to be able to prevent, so to me gut health is preventing toxins and pathogens from having a negative impact on the host, allowing nutrients to be absorbed, and doing that without having to induce any type of inflammation. And so a lot of the focus to me on gut health is prevention.

Mike
0:08:12
Because once you have tissue inflammation, then the goal is, okay, we need to try to control it from becoming overly aggressive to where we're having actually more things actually getting absorbed because we have leaky gut. And then the focus has to be on gut repair.

Mike
0:08:26
But, you know, gut health to me is, when I look at it from an immunological standpoint, I look at it, I don't want a lot of inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, because it does cause a lot of downstream problems. And so a lot of the things we always look at is how much inflammation are we having? And if we start digging into some of the research that we've done with PowerGard specifically, a couple of things we look at are if I have a chance to harvest tissues and look at the tissue, the main things that we're looking at is not only morphology

Mike
0:09:00
of the intestines, but I'm also looking at the level of inflammation that we're seeing in that intestinal tissue.

Casey
0:09:07
Really cool. And I'm going to ask Nathan to jump in here, even though I didn't prepare him for this question. So talk about clays. You talked about, you know, the environment golf courses. We're talking about gut health here and microtoxins. What is the role of clay to span between those purposes?

Nathan
0:09:26
It depends on what clay you're looking at, Casey. There's multiple clays out there. So as we look at clays for absorption or we're trying to actually putting in a binding clay to tighten up a pellet through a pellet mill. Or if we're looking at these absorption clays that do have some effect on toxins throughout the body. And I think those clays are different. You've got sepia lights that's out there, you have montmorillonites, you have bitnites, you have other things like diatomaceous earth that some people would consider in that same clay realm. They're different based on their structure, their chemical structure, and then

Nathan
0:10:05
also their mineralogy itself. So as you tie up from the, let's say a sports field, a baseball field, a major league baseball field, the absorption capacity we're looking at there is tying up water. We're absorbing that water and then slowly releasing that water back in the system so that they can play on the ball field much quicker. Well, when we look at it in an animal,

Nathan
0:10:29
we're actually trying to bind or tie up a toxin so that it's not having an adverse effect on that gut, you know, causing that inflammation that Mike talked about or causing issues within the animal. And there is differences in types of play that you want to use for those two purposes.

Nathan
0:10:50
But when we start talking about moisture on a ball field versus moisture in a poultry house, those two clays are going to be very similar, the same structures. The particle sizing is going to be different handling, but they're still very similar type clays. You want a non-swelling clay that will absorb a significant amount of water

Nathan
0:11:09
and basically release that water slowly back in the atmosphere so that you don't have mud in the house or you don't have mud on that baseball field. So when we look at clays, there's different plays for different applications. I guess that's a long way to say, it's a very complex question when you say,

Nathan
0:11:28
how does a clay fit between the ball fields and an animal? It is, there's multiple clays and they're used for different purposes. And the ones we use, we're very targeted with the clays we use for each facet of our industry. Really cool. Mike, for our audience, I know everybody talks about mycotoxins a lot.

Casey
0:11:51
I love how you did gut health. Let's keep it simple. Can you explain mycotoxins, where they come from and kind of which ones are harmful for the different species we work with.

Speaker
0:12:05
Stay with us. We'll be right back.

Speaker
0:12:10
Natural OMRI listed clay additives are revolutionizing how we look at biotoxin, moisture, and bacterial mitigation. The industry is shifting towards new non-pharmaceutical solutions to support environmental and digestive health that promote growth and performance. Visit profileanimalhealth.com to learn more. Expert support and global distribution. Profileanimalhealth.com

Nathan
0:12:43
Yeah, definitely. So again, just by definition, a mycotoxin is a fungal toxin. It's toxins that are produced by molds. There's lots of different types and there's lots more than we even talk about generally because we've probably all heard of aflatoxin or fumonicin or ziralinone,

Mike
0:13:05
but there's lots of different species of mycotoxins. But maybe I'll just kind of talk about some of the major classes that we see. And one of the things I always like to point out to people is, because I'll get a lot of mycotoxin analyses from a nutritionist and say, hey, can you take a look at this and tell me what you think?

Mike
0:13:24
I think it looks okay because we're all below these FDA thresholds. So the FDA has these thresholds that we need to be below to be able to feed. But again, the FDA is really more interested in preventing adulteration of food product. They're not under the premise of animal health and performance. And I always tell people, it's funny, so if you look at a lot of the mycotoxin research, you know, a lot of times when we may be doing a mycotoxin challenge to look at a potential,

Mike
0:13:57
you know, does this mitigation strategy improve the performance and health of the animal, a lot of times we're challenging animals below that FDA threshold for that species of animal. And I always laugh because in the conclusion, they always say, an interesting finding was that

Mike
0:14:14
even though we challenged these animals with a low level below the FDA threshold, we saw negative impacts of challenging those animals with that mycotoxin. And so we know that it gives a false sense of security to nutritionists and producers that these FDA values are there because we see a lot of negative performance impacts on animals

Mike
0:14:38
well below those FDA levels. The other thing to point out is the individual mycotoxin thresholds. Typically, if you have one mycotoxin, you may see other mycotoxins present as well. And we know that these different mycotoxins interact synergistically, meaning that low levels of a lot of mycotoxins

Mike
0:14:58
can actually have a severe negative impact on animals. So again, we always want to try to find, oh, this one's above the threshold, so that's the problem. Well, you may have a lot of different mycotoxins well below the FDA-defined kind of thresholds

Mike
0:15:15
that could be having a negative impact on the animal's production performance, health, and some of them specifically towards reproduction. So, that will kind of lead us into your question of species specificity, because there is some species specificity in the sense that certain mycotoxins seem to affect certain species more. Like aflatoxin, generally it affects all species, but it really gets highlighted in young animals as well as in lactating dairy cows. The lactating dairy cow thing actually

Mike
0:15:48
comes from, as you can start seeing a residue found in milk, and that would be an adulterated milk. If you look at like Pumonicin for example, again, it affects most species, but really it seems to have a negative effect in swine as well as in breeding animals. The other interesting thing is I get phone calls occasionally and it'll be from an equine vet. Horses are also pretty sensitive.

Mike
0:16:31
Ant pets to fumonicin as well. One that we focus a lot on with PowerGuard is xyralinone. Xyralinone is actually a lipophilic mycotoxin. PowerGuard does a very good job at absorbing xyralinone. Xyralinone can be an issue in a lot of species, but you typically will see it also commonly negatively impacting breeding animals

Mike
0:16:53
because it's like an estrogenic type compound. And so a lot of phenotypically, you can actually see it like a swelling of the vulva and decreasing the reproductive efficiency. You see it in swine and sows, but you also do see it more often than I used to be aware of in lactating cows,

Mike
0:17:13
as well as in young heifers. You can actually see the swelling. One of the original kind of field trials we did with PowerGuard before we even commercialized it is I had a local dairyman that was having, and I knew the nutritionist

Mike
0:17:28
because he had done his PhD with me, and he had suspected a serralinone and just real low reproductive efficiency in his bred heifers, and there was some swelling of the vulva. So we went in with PowerGuard and were able to resolve a lot of that issue.

Mike
0:17:42
So again, yeah, there's a lot of different mycotoxins. They seem to work synergistically and low levels below the, again, I want to emphasize this is just because you're below the FDA thresholds doesn't mean you're in the clear. I don't know if Nathan has anything else he'd like to add.

Nathan
0:18:01
Yeah, I think you're right, Monica. You know, you're always, when you have multiple mycotoxins, you've got multiple threats to that system. You're going to have a multiplicative effect on that animal. Just because we've got 21 parts per million threshold for alpha-toxin doesn't mean that if you're at 19 parts per million, you're in the clear.

Nathan
0:18:23
You're going to see some negative effects on feed conversion, also weight gain, and that's just in our younger animals. And I actually just kind of will tell a little story, Casey, I don't know if we're allowed to do this here, but my grandfather used to, he is kind of where I learned my animal health,

Nathan
0:18:43
animal nutrition from. And he was the same person that we fed air corn all the way up until I was 15 years old. But he firmly believed that our young animals needed to be protected. And that was the foundation of having a healthy animal long term, is if we could get that young animal off to a great start, we could produce an animal that was going to be easy to keep and all that. So I think that's one

Nathan
0:19:11
thing we've missed because the FDA does put that out there is, hey, this is the threshold. And everybody kind of gets into that. They kind of get trapped into that. Well, if I'm underneath that with my corn as I'm making my feed, then I'm good. Well, no, you're going to have negative impact. And I have seen many cases with multiple integrators where they were feeding corn that had as little

Nathan
0:19:36
level as, you know, seven parts per million. And they're still having performance issues, and it can be corrected once they started mitigating those microtoxin risk. So, I think that's spot on. One thing I will say is profile and MB coming together to try to bring this technology, it goes back to the industry, then our life

Nathan
0:20:05
is fulfilled, right? And that's what makes me so proud to have Mike as part of the team, you know, at MB, is he has that same passion and he's driven. And I think we have to speak pretty loud about these mycotoxins, especially in the current situation. We're trying to get more efficient daily.

Nathan
0:20:22
So having this conversation about don't let your guard down because you're underneath the levels the FDA is or the USDA and FDA has put out there for these mycotoxin levels. Right. Get specific, make sure that you're mitigating those

Casey
0:20:35
risks at all times, no matter what the level. I'm going to ask Mike this because you've lived this most of your career. Why do you think the FDA still has not allowed us in the U.S. additives strictly for mycotoxin binding and Texas is the only one that's allowed that any feed additive to be registered under that definition. Why do you think we're still fight that?

Casey
0:21:02
To be honest with you, I don't have probably a great answer for that. I don't know if they feel is a little bit over into the pharmaceutical and they're just more conservative on that standpoint. I mean, they're generally very conservative in how they set their regulation numbers on things. So, I suspect that that may be why is that it's just they feel like that it's crossing

Mike
0:21:25
over maybe into their control of pharmaceuticals.

Nathan
0:21:30
I don't know if you have a better answer or better insight into that? Yeah, like Casey said, I've dealt with this for a while and I've got my own personal beliefs within it. I think you're right to some extent, Mike, but I also believe that there is a lot of people out there that says, that will say or can say, well, my clay solves this mycotoxin issue. Well, as we understand mycotoxins, it's a numbers game. So the higher level of mycotoxins, the more products that you've got to use and what is the binding efficacy of those products, and not really binding necessarily on some mycotoxins. You take a kaolin, for example,

Nathan
0:22:17
you know, you're basically blocking the... That's a whole different type of way of mitigating mycotoxins. You're not really binding the toxin, you're keeping the toxin from intruding into the gut. So, I think a lot of the FDA looks at it and says, hey, how do we regulate this and make sure that people are saying they can mitigate mycotoxins actually can? I think that's the true sense. And then, you know, you could get into a lot of conspiracy theories about why they wouldn't allow these to be out there. But at the end of the day, I think that's going to change. I think there's legislation

Nathan
0:22:53
in play now that will bring it to where clays can be used as mycotoxin mitigants. And I'm welcoming that. It's been proven that many different clays can be effective against mycotoxins with clay. So I think the FDA will eventually allow that to happen and I'm looking forward to the day for that to happen for everyone. Well, I was going to say because the biggest frustration I have with the federal government on how a lot of this stuff is managed is FDA. And I've been in an FDA meeting on a recall

Casey
0:23:33
and looking at closing down a plant. It was a fun experience, but I learned a lot. But their whole sole mission is to enforce. And then you have the USDA, whose mission is to educate and help support agriculture. And we see the investment, one of my old colleagues, Tony Pukawakens, has his lab from the USDA, but the USDA has specialists just focusing on how mycotoxins impact livestock. And then we have the FDA over here saying, well, it's really hard to register these as feed additives or become grass under that versus a pharmaceutical

Casey
0:24:12
route in that mitigation. Maybe someday they'll come together and actually work together instead

Casey
0:24:19
of against each other.

Nathan
0:24:20
Yeah, I think that's, you know, in my, we've actually in PowerGuard or within our scope of trials, we've worked with USDA directly on some of these toxins. And at the end of the day, I mean, you've got one part of our government that truly supports this and believes that, you know, that clays, specific clays can mitigate mycotoxin risk. And then we have the FDA saying no, it can't.

Nathan
0:24:47
So I agree with you, Casey. I hope sooner rather than later that those two entities come together and gives today's producer a solution. Because I go back and I reiterate what I said, you can't just come out with regulations and say, okay, well, if you're underneath this level, you don't have a mycotoxin problem. We do have mycotoxin mitigate, you should see a bump in feed efficiency and weight gain.

Nathan
0:25:20
And you'll see that. I've seen it multiple times. I know, Casey, you've seen it multiple times, and I'm sure Mike's seen it multiple times. So I hope that all this comes together fairly quickly.

Casey
0:25:30
Awesome. Well, let's switch topics a little bit here. Nathan, earlier you touched on the differences in clays and Mike, when you've been researching micro toxins, picking a clay to do this, right? Because you mentioned you deal with aflatoxin, fumonicins, or alanone as kind of some of the major micro toxins out there. And there's some other ones that fit into working with clays. How do you pick out a clay? Because I mean, I have clay out here in my backyard, I could dig up and go feed my animals, but it may not do the same thing.

Mike
0:26:03
Now you definitely, that's a conversation I get, like, hey, I have a lot of clay right behind my facility. I can, it's cheaper for me to dig it up. And so going back to 2017, when I was first introduced and made a trip out to Blue Mountain, there was a couple of things that I was interested in

Mike
0:26:19
in Profile's facility and their process was, number one, have a mine that has two different visible mineralogies. So the top part of their mine is a lighter color, and as you start going deeper, let's just say around 15 feet, you start to transition into a darker colored, kind of a grayish material instead of the top layer being more tan. So one of the things we were interested in, and they were interested, asked me, is there

Mike
0:26:48
a difference in those two mineral deposits? Since they'd opened up that mine, they'd always mine the top 15. And as it started getting in that transitionary, that's where they would stop and do their remediation of that mine.

Mike
0:27:01
And so that was one of our first questions. We know that there's something different in different mineral deposits, even if, let's just say, it's a Montmorillonite. Is there a difference between those two? And we had no clue when we started out. The other thing about Profile's process

Mike
0:27:16
is they can convert that clay through a furnace and convert it to a ceramic particle. And there is a lot of information. If you just start Googling ceramic and filtration, that technology has been around for a long time. Not only specific to, I mean,

Mike
0:27:34
really it's not even been so specific to mycotoxins, it's water filtration systems, air filtration systems. So they have the capability to do that. So our initial studies, they sent me four different samples. They sent me the two different clay. I could obviously tell which was which because one was gray and one was tan, but then one was converted to a ceramic instead of just being dried as a clay. So we had those four samples. And ultimately what we ended up finding out, and the thing

Mike
0:28:05
that I was interested in initially was I wanted to find something at a high affinity. So, I didn't have to feed very much of it. I didn't want to take up a lot of space in the ration. The other thing I wanted to look at was broad spectrum. So, I wanted to be able to bind not only aflatoxin because I think that's what a lot of original things when they looked at clays and screen clays, they looked at how well

Mike
0:28:28
do we bind to aflatoxin. So in the initial studies, we took two completely different mycotoxins. I looked at aflatoxin and I looked at ziralinum. Those were kind of my two initial. Since then, we've screened lots of different mycotoxins, but those were the two we initially kind of set out to look because their chemistries are so different. And so ultimately what we ended up determining was it was the deeper gray material had something in it that bound both aflatoxin and ziralinone better. And then the other thing we also determined was converting it to a ceramic because that costs a lot of money to do that. We put a lot

Mike
0:29:05
of energy, I mean natural gas energy, just equipment energy into doing that process. And so there had to be a value to going through that, converting it from a plate to a ceramic. And ultimately we ended up finding out, and this was, they hadn't really told me much. I finalized our report and I said,

Mike
0:29:24
okay, the gray ceramic is the best product. And they're like, well, we don't manufacture any of that. So, because I said, that's what we'll take.

Mike
0:29:31
And they're like, well,

Mike
0:29:32
we don't actually manufacture any of that. So long story short, once we kind of honed in on that gray ceramic, then we started looking at a lot of different. What is the breadth of mycotoxins that particle and that product is now called PowerGuard

Mike
0:29:48
in the United States and Terrashield internationally. What is the value of that and looking at a more broad spectrum mycotoxin. And I know today we're mostly talking about mycotoxin, but a lot of the interest I'm actually interested in, and I had a PhD student that focused completely on the ability of PowerGuard to bind gram-negative

Mike
0:30:06
bacteria like salmonella and E. coli. And we've done a lot of in vitro work and we've done a lot of actual challenge work in vivo in the swine and dairy industry showing that PowerGuard is ineffective. I would always tell people, to me, it's a part of controlling gram-negative bacteria. Like on my own, I didn't mention this earlier, but I also own a calf raising facility with my brother. We raise about 50,000 animals a year in that facility and we get those animals at day one of life and then they leave our facility at six months of life. And so talk about gastrointestinal health,

Mike
0:30:39
that's a perfect model. And I always tell people there's not a day that goes by that an animal does not have PowerGuard in some form or another go into its mouth. So we ultra fine grind some of it and it goes into milk. So if you look at our milk formulation, there's PowerGard in an ultra fine ground product that we call Guardian at MB. So every day, every bottle of milk they get has PowerGard in it. Their calf starter, their calf grower, and the pellet is PowerGard. Because I think it's an important part not only from a mycotoxin, but also from a biotoxin and bacterial control. I have interest in looking at its ability, especially with a lot of

Mike
0:31:18
the viruses, because I think if you look at like water filtration literature, ceramic particles can filter out virus particles too, viruses and virus particles. We haven't even began to touch that. So I have hypotheses to believe that we are touching some of that. And I always tell people, I said, I'm basically feeding a filter to these cats or to these animals, you know, trying to bind a broad variety of potential pathogens and toxins.

Casey
0:31:45
I was going to say, but if we look at human history, you know, we started out what wooden bowls, rock, and then we went to clay, right? And clay and ceramics became this elegant dinnerware. But I think if we go back to history, there were some benefits of ceramic and clay way before. We put it to a scientific measure and. Everybody likes to talk about micro toxins, but when I think of micro toxins and gut health, there are it's not just micro toxins. If you're impacting micro toxins, as you said, bio toxins.

Casey
0:32:20
And we look at, we want the silver bullet, especially in swine right now with E. coli, right? Oh, can you just prevent E. coli? Well, with medications and vaccines, probably we can eliminate it. But the reality is, is we have probably in a lot of these younger animals, this low level of different enteric issues and one stressor sets it off, where like you said, gut health, the prevention, and we want to put in while we're on this trial and we didn't have a difference and we say it didn't work on a lot of this gut health products and I think

Casey
0:32:57
That mindset of prevention is worth a lot and I always thought you know It's we talked about mycotoxins for mold, but there's also a lot of other toxins We learned in the human nutrition now. We talked about a lot of these inflammatory cascades and disease profiles and humans and how the guts so interact with

Casey
0:33:17
that.

Casey
0:33:18
And I think it's limitless to think about how we mitigate toxins in our bodies. And I love the idea of we're feeding them a filter and so or feeding them a nice flower pots to grow.

Nathan
0:33:34
Grounded flower pots.

Casey
0:33:35
Yeah, yeah. But I think that's kind of unique too. I would say, so a few things. I didn't take Nathan's word for it. So I didn't even start buying Nathan's clay for my customer for mycotoxins.

Casey
0:33:51
I bought it for water mitigation on the environmental side and he's like, test it out and let me know what you think. And I'm like, oh, I love this. This was exactly what we need to use. We were having water control issues and we're USDA inspected facilities, my one client, and it worked great to help control the water issues we had in those facilities. But then he started showing me turkey data and I'm like, chicken data

Casey
0:34:19
on moisture control and litter quality. And I'm like, wow, this is really cool. And then he goes, you know, we have PowerGuard and we could feed that and feed. And that's when I really started looking into it. And I, I just didn't take your word for it, Mike. I went behind your guys' back and sent it somewhere and very shocked to the point. This company internationally is like, where did you get that product?

Casey
0:34:44
What is it? And I'm like, well, you let me know. But I came upon a lot of people talking about, you know, microtoxins and analytics. How do you distinguish the difference between that and some of the, you know, can everybody can show aflatoxin binding, but what are some main keys when you look at analytics when you're picking out a microtoxin binder per se, and what are you

Casey
0:35:11
looking at and how have you set that evaluation up in your lab?

Mike
0:35:16
So I remember what I wanted to tell a quick story. So you know, I had done a lot of the initial work kind of through my lab and an employee of ours that had gotten his PhD with me. And it was funny, we did some third party analysis and then everybody was all excited about the third. I was like, guys, I've been seeing this for six years, you know, so it was kind of funny.

Mike
0:35:36
They didn't believe me either at profile, I guess. I usually pride myself on being an honest person. But when we looked at and compared, we've compared against a lot of other potential mycotoxin mitigation products in the marketplace. And I've done a lot of stuff for nutritionists, hey, here's what we're using. Can you send me a report on how yours stacks up to it?

Mike
0:35:59
And so one of the first things, if it's a clay, you know, and I'm looking at just time constraints on things, I'm going to look at how well does it bind aflatoxin? Because in theory, clays have historically been shown to be effective against aflatoxin and they should be. And so that's always where I start. And if I can quickly show that, I mean, there's been certain times where, and I'm usually not the most blunt person, but I have been blunt with a few nutritionists saying the effectiveness is extremely low.

Mike
0:36:29
Like what you're currently feeding and thinking you're getting even aflatoxin mitigation, you're not. You'd have to be feeding over a quarter pound of this to a lactating cow. And I said, here's what a quarter pound of this looks like. It's taking up a lot of space in the ration. And so then if this at least passes the aflatoxin test, then I move on and I'll start looking at ziralinone, fumonosin, okratoxin, and kind of then see where we all stack up. The one thing, so like a lot of our data like in our slide deck will report some internal

Mike
0:37:02
data and some third-party data where we've compared PowerGuard versus other mycotoxin mitigation products in the United States. And there's a few that are really good with serralinone. And they're OK with aflatoxin. And they're OK with fumonicin. There's quite a few that are OK with or do a pretty good job

Mike
0:37:21
against aflatoxin, but don't touch serralinone or don't do very well against fumonicin. And so again, I try to take a more holistic approach looking at the spectrum of mycotoxins. But again, kind of the way I look at it from a quick screening, I first go after aflatoxin

Mike
0:37:37
because it should do something there. It's always nice when I can stop there because it makes my job easier. I can tell them this didn't work against aflatoxin and it should. And so I don't need to even need to go,

Mike
0:37:48
you know, look at this one a little bit deeper. The other thing I tell people is also what kind of sets PowerGuard apart is that whole gram negative bacteria, E. coli, salmonella work we've done. But what we've also done

Mike
0:38:01
because we get asked this question a lot by nutritionists, and we actually did this study and it's been published in a journal, is we looked at does PowerGuard at a higher feed rate interfere with either macro or micronutrient apparent digestibility. And so we did it actually in a weaned pig model, and we fed PowerGuard at kind of the higher level that we would recommend if there was some severe biotoxin challenges.

Mike
0:38:28
And we fed that to wean pigs for an extended period of time and looked at apparent nutrient digestibility, looked at the macro, didn't expect it to really affect macro I was more interested in the micro. And so we looked at trace mineral, we looked at B vitamins,

Mike
0:38:41
and we looked at fat soluble vitamins. We harvested those pigs at the end of the study, we took liver samples and sent those to Michigan State for micronutrient analysis to see if we had affected the status of any of those micronutrients, trace minerals and fat-soluble vitamins.

Mike
0:38:55
And ultimately we concluded that there was no difference in digestibility of anything. And arguably you could say, I mean, there was maybe even a little bit higher mineral levels in the PowerGard supplemented pigs. Again, it's hard for me to do a full analysis for everybody.

Mike
0:39:12
And so we've looked at a lot of them now. We initially, in some of our initial stuff, after we kind of developed the product and said, here's the specifications of the products that performs best in our model, now let's compare it against, you know, competitors. We looked at it and said, here are the people in the swine industry, or here's the products in the swine industry, the dairy industry, the pet industry, and let's get those samples

Mike
0:39:35
and let's compare side by side, because I think that's the best comparison. And so most of our work comparatively is in vitro looking at just direct binding ability. And so we've run a lot of stuff through our, we have a water filtration method to test against gram-negative bacteria

Mike
0:39:50
and to kind of highlight a little bit of your comment in the swine industry on E. coli. We've been sent a lot of field isolates of E. coli outbreaks. I mean, there is some difference in our ability to bind it depending on the strain that's affecting that barn. But generally speaking, I would say

Mike
0:40:07
we're anywhere from a 1 to 1 and 1 1 in a few cases, even a little bit higher log reductions when we run PowerGuard in that model system. So again, I look at the broad spectrum. To simplify, summarize, I look at the broad spectrum of binding mycotoxins.

Mike
0:40:24
I run it through my water filtration to look at its ability to bind gram-negative bacteria. Because clays, typically, you may get a half-log reduction in E. coli, and we're getting anywhere from one to one and a half. So, big difference between those two things. It takes a lot of time and energy to do the not-binding-up trace minerals. But at least I can stand there confident in front of nutritionists and say, I don't think we bind it because when we fed it at a high level and a susceptible population, we didn't

Mike
0:40:53
see any negative impacts. I can't say that if you feed a quarter pound of a sodium bentonite out of Utah that you're not binding up some zinc and selenium and even maybe some water-soluble vitamins or water-soluble vitamins.

Casey
0:41:08
Well, I was going to say that's been the biggest thing I've learned in my career about microtoxins and different feed additives. I think 15 years ago, when I started in the commercial feed industry, a lot of people would buy a product that had multiple ingredients in it.

Casey
0:41:24
And now visiting with my fellow nutritionists out there, we're strategically picking the ingredients that we're pairing together for different roles. And that was one of the exciting things about this clay is like, I like clay, but I also know it can bind some of my micronutrients. And then the higher inclusion products means I'm taking away from my energy space. And

Casey
0:41:47
we know the cost of energy for animals is just going to keep increasing. We're competing against the biofuels and that diet cost savings there on that space is so important, so valuable to be able to just get a little bit more K-Cal in if you can. And I think that is the difference I've found with the clays I've worked with in the past is that the particle size and because it's ceramic, it's a different shape to help bind it differently than just grinding up a dry clay in my mind. And so that's helped with my formulations on saving some of what I call energy space

Casey
0:42:27
because every pound matters in the diet.

Mike
0:42:31
Well, it's funny you say that. So, and this won't be surprising to you, but again, I'm more of a cattle person, but we did a weaned pig trial and I went out with the students to mix the diets and we were testing one pound per 10

Mike
0:42:45
versus five pounds per 10 of PowerGard on a weaned diet. And we were gonna feed them that diet for seven days and then challenge them with salmonella. I mean, one pound per ton is not very much power guard. You're like, you know, it's a very small amount. And then let alone, then all of a sudden we get these pigs into the barn, we wean them

Mike
0:43:00
from Texas Tech Farm, move them over to the USDA about two miles down the road, put them in a pen. I'm like, these pigs aren't eating anything. And then we're going to challenge him in seven days. And I'm like, I'm just not getting enough power guard in. I'm nervous that I wasn't getting enough power guard

Mike
0:43:14
into them and day seven came and we challenged the animals. You know, they had ramped up their intakes in those seven days, but again, I was like, man, I wish I, I just don't know. And the interesting thing that the biggest take home to me in that data set was the five pounds per ton

Mike
0:43:30
completely mitigated the decrease in dry matter intake or feed intake of those pigs after we challenged in the salmonella equal to the pigs that weren't infected with salmonella. The average day of the game was not a difference between those animals that were challenged

Mike
0:43:45
with salmonella, fed five pounds per 10 Power Guard, when we compared it to the uninfected controls. The interesting thing to me was the one pound per 10 was very effective. Even just a small amount, that just got to me that the potency of the ceramic particle is that we don't have to take up a lot of space in the diet to be effective. And so that is one of the main driving points and selling points to me of PowerGuard or this ceramic technology is that you don't have to feed a lot of it to be effective.

Mike
0:44:16
And I had a nutritionist or a producer in town last week for a conference at Texas Tech, and he's on PowerGuard. And he said, you know, this is just a cheap insurance policy that we include all the time now. We've feed it at the basal level and if we do see an issue, then we're going to bump it up, but we're going to feed it all the time now.

Casey
0:44:35
That's my philosophy.

Nathan
0:44:38
I can tell you both of you, seeing what you just said makes me feel good about being able to take it to the market and stand by what we're putting in the market. I go back, talk about the differences between what's out there and PowerGuard. We do know, to kind of go back to what Mike had said, we initially didn't know the difference between these clays, you know, the tan clay or the gray clay that Mike had selected for

Nathan
0:45:03
PowerGuard. But through tests, we have found, identified those differences. And I think a big difference does come back to what Mike was saying is that process itself. We're creating a product that's porous all the way through that particle. And no matter where you break that particle in the grinding process, you're going to have the same porosity for every particle that's in that mix.

Nathan
0:45:27
And that goes back to speak, just from my standpoint, it goes back to that point that you don't have to feed as much to be as effective as a typically dried clay or a typical mycotoxin midgut clay that's used today. So I'm excited to hear this and I will say I agree with Mike. We are just getting started with what this can do. You know the Salmonella, the E. coli, we've been looking at other bacteria. You know, can we have log reductions?

Nathan
0:45:58
So there's a lot more that we want to study. I know Mike has a lot on his mind, you know, a lot in his mind that he wants to try. Profile ourselves, we have a lot of things we want to try as well. So I'm excited about where PowerGuard is going and I'm excited to hear what Casey said because, yeah, I did bring it to Casey and said, hey, you know, if you like the environmental care, we can throw a little bit

Casey
0:46:20
of PowerGuard here into the feed and see what happens. I'm just switching out a product and nothing against the last product I was using as my insurance policy, but I saved my clients probably about $5 a ton by switching. And you'll laugh at this, and the first customer I tried it out on was the rabbit customers. And if you listen to the Europeans, they would say, oh, rabbits are evolved to handle micro toxins because they eat a lot of roots. And I'm like, every animal is impacted by toxins.

Nathan
0:46:51
Yeah, I would definitely, even Casey, you know what, pull that mitigant out there and see what the feed performance or what the conversion, feed conversion would be or what the animal performance would be. How many sick rabbits would you have if you weren't mitigating those toxins?

Casey
0:47:04
Well, I can't say it's all the nutrition because I've made a lot of nutritional changes that I would say from what I've seen in the last six months with some of these nutritional changes, we haven't had massive flare-ups. And I'm really curious to see, with the rabbits anyways, and this is telling me about some of the strategies I've taken, not with just mycotoxins, but toxins in general, you know, that we always have that pastorilla outbreak in the middle of August to September because of the massive heat stress. So between this and some of the other changes, I'm really curious this year to see, obviously

Casey
0:47:41
management-wise they're doing some different things as well. We've implemented things there, but from a nutrition perspective, do I have the herd set up that I'm not going to take such a massive hit on dew mortality and reproduction this summer or fall? And that's really going to be my test. And as I said, I used to just say, yeah, let's throw it in and I guess it's $8 a ton.

Casey
0:48:05
But if I lose 10% of my reproductive efficiency, that's worth a lot. And now it's more strategically looking at each animal and phase of what products I use, where and, you know, power guard is part of that solution. But it's not the only thing. And I think as we're wrapping up here, and I want to get Mike's last minute thoughts is that I think nutritionists today have to know a lot more than we used to. And a lot of us are classically

Casey
0:48:33
trained, especially in the swine world, on amino acid requirements, trace mineral requirements, maybe vitamin requirements. But as we navigate, you came out of an immunology lab, I came out of an immunology lab. There's a lot more that we need to understand about formulating diets and I think with that I'm going to let Mike kind of reflect on that and give his thoughts.

Mike
0:48:56
The way I look at nutrition, I think you're exactly right. Nutrition isn't just, you know, it used to be more like a feed than feeding and now they have to understand endocrinology, you have to understand immunology to some degree and I still, it baffles my mind, like at an undergraduate level, that animal science doesn't require, generally, doesn't require immunology. And so it's just still baffles my mind because it's really what we're dealing with is nutrition

Mike
0:49:24
and animal health. And I think immunology fits a nice spot kind of in the middle of that because we know sick animals will not perform as well. Their feed efficiency is going to be less. Their performance is going to be less. They're going to have more of a negative impact on the environment because you take more resources

Mike
0:49:40
to raise those animals and you're not going to get the efficiency of the trade off of those. You know, it's been kind of fun over the last 20 years calling myself a nutritional immunologist and getting to educate a lot of nutritionists on the topic of, you know, how does nutrition impact health of animals? And we've talked mostly today about binding toxins and or pathogens, but it's a much more broad field.

Mike
0:50:06
There's a lot of different bioactive and that's a lot of what my company does is looks at other things that we can blend with PowerGard. You know, we actually manufacture a product that has PowerGard. I mean, PowerGard is an ingredient that goes into a lot of my blended products as well. So we sell a lot of just straight PowerGard and feed mills.

Mike
0:50:23
But I also the value of PowerGard, I blend it into a lot of other products as well. You know, it is a critical ingredient to the success of my company. It's a critical ingredient to the success of my calf raising facility, because historically, if you talk to calf raisers, the two biggest issues are gastrointestinal health in the first six months of life, and then respiratory disease is second. But, you know, we don't have as much issue with gastrointestinal diseases, others do,

Mike
0:50:57
or other people, or historically. And I do attribute to that, to what we do from a gut health standpoint, and PowerGuard being a critical kind of, I'd almost say it's like one of the cornerstone ingredients that goes into our strategy to improving gut health.

Mike
0:51:15
Because like you said, a lot of times, an animal's very good at hiding disease and they're very good at trying to keep everything at bay. And at some point, there's either gonna be a stressor, like you mentioned, heat stress. And at some point, it tips the balance.

Mike
0:51:32
And if PowerGuard can be a strategy that makes that, to tip the balance, that stressor or those compounding stressors have to be more, then I think we've done our job as people that have developed PowerGuard to try to help animals mitigate disease and just

Casey
0:51:48
prevent disease. Well, that's awesome. I guess to wrap it up, because this was well worth the extra minutes that you're listening to hopefully here on this episode, if they want to buy PowerGuard in the U.S. or TerrorShield internationally or environmental care? How do they get a hold of you, Mike?

Mike
0:52:07
Yeah, they can call MB Nutritional Sciences. You can find our information at mbfeeds.com. Our phone number there is 806-632-0020. It's also my email is easy, mike at mbfeeds.com. I'll get that to the right people. We have quite a broad distribution network in the US and expanding that internationally

Mike
0:52:32
with profile. But most of the major feed mills in the US either have PowerGuard or can easily get PowerGuard through one of our distribution networks like NutriBland, DMD, Harbor Point, Mineral, DSI, Stutzman. So, I mean, it's around there and yes. Let's say they could just call me and you just need it. I just take the order. Or they just call you Casey. And do you handle environmental care as well? We do. Well I think

Casey
0:53:00
that wraps it up. Thank you gentlemen for being on The Real P3. Thank you for having us. that wraps it up. Thank you gentlemen for being on The Real P3. Thank you for having us.

Mike
0:53:06
you