World Nutrition Forum 2010 Austria

01. Salzburg, city of Mozart, is Austria's fourth largest city. This October, it is the scene for the fourth edition of the World Nutrition Forum, sponsored by Austrian animal nutrition company Biomin.

02. Approximately 700 people from 73 countries came to Salzburg to attend this edition, held in the city's Congress, from 13-16 October.

03. Biomin's founder and chairman, Erich Erber, kicked off the first day with a song and a presentation in the theme 'expect the unexpected'. As is pointed out in more symposia these days, he asked how the planet Earth will feed its 9 billion people in 2050. He mentioned four areas of concern: a shaky economy; global warming; population growth and depletion of natural resources.

04. As an illustration of how to take risks but at the same time feel in total control, Austrian pilot Hannes Arch presented his life tale – about his experiences in the Red Bull Air Race World Series, when doing rock climbing or when doing base jumping.

05. Moving into the theme of 'the dilemma of responsibility', Gordon Butland, animal production expert, located in Thailand, spoke about the last ten years as 'the decade of challenges', zooming in into topics like feed additive contaminations, Avian Influenza, biofuel policies, the financial tsunami, an increased regulatory environment, labour shortages and industry consolidation.

06. Next, Jim Smith, World Bank, USA, zoomed into trends and factors of the animal livestock market. With regard to China and the Asian countries, he introduced the 'one health concept': Since increasing amounts of people will have to share the same space with increasing amounts of production animals – it is likely that all health issues will influence each other.

07. Dr Felicia Wu, University gave an excellent presentation as to the effects of certain mycotoxins on different animal species. She also touched on two relevant developments related to mycotoxins in the future. First, she said when feeding Distiller's Dried Grains and Solubles, concentrations of mycotoxins may be up to three times higher in comparison to conventional corn – increasing its impact. Secondly, she said global warming may have a strong influence on mycotoxin development in feedstuffs.

08. Dr Rudolf Krska, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria, is working on methods detecting mycotoxins in feedstuffs. He also talked about 'masked' or 'altered' mycotoxins, i.e. those that may escape initial testing but are released during animals’ digestion.

09. Dr Bart Borg, director of feed operations at Murphy-Brown swine farms in the USA, spoke about his company’s efforts to avoid mycotoxin contamination. These measures include e.g. in a buy/ non-buy treshold, adjustments to feed additives and on-site testing.

10. Giacomo Biagi, University of Bologna, Italy, briefly touched on the effect of mycotoxins on fish (leading to economic losses) and dogs & cats through pet food (leading to owner grief).

11. Dr Timothy Phillips, Texas A&M University, USA, spoke about the efficacy of using clay as a mycotoxin-binder; and what kinds of clay may work best; and how effects like these could be measured. Biomarkers play an important role in this.

12. Biomarkers also were the key topic of Nguyen Quang Thieu, Nong Lam University, Saigon, Vietnam. He spoke about the possibility to deduce mycotoxin biomarkers from swine urine, serum or bile, as every mycotoxin leaves its own biomarker.

13. Dr Todd Applegate (middle), Purdue University, USA, was awarded this forum's B.R.A.I.N. Award - a prize of US$10,000 within the Biomin Research And Innovation Network. He received the award for 'a broader understanding of the immunologic and physiologic impacts of probiotic phytogenic supplementation in poultry'.

A large part of the second day was devoted to finding optimising solutions in animal nutrition. For the pig sector, Dr Bart Borg, Murphy-Brown, USA, once more addressed the audience, explaining about his company's efforts to optimise feed efficiency. He named e.g. looking for new, alternative ingredients, improving micron size and enhancing pelleting.

Dr Franz Waxenecker explained about Biomin's concept of NutriEconomics - a business strategy involving sustainability on animal level (nutrition), on farm level (economics) and on world level (environment).

Dr Waxenecker's speech was followed by an example by Dr Gerard Gaillard, Agroscope, Switzerland, who introduced the principle of life cycle assessment for farms - and how measuring can help reducing animal's carbon footprint. His paper roused quite an amount of discussion as dissenters felt initiatives like these may tamper with developing countries' growth.

What followed was an interesting panel discussion in which the contribution of Dr Frank Mitloehner, University of California Davis, USA, made a lot of impression. He showed the FAO report 'Livestock's Long Shadow', published in 2006, misinterpreted certain data, attributing a relatively incorrect amount of CO2 pollution to livestock production.

Andreas Kern, Biomin, Austria, closed off the official part of the forum. He summarised the forum's speakers. The next edition of the WNF, it was announced, will take place in Singapore.