Acidifier as an Alternative Material to Antibiotics in Animal Feed
By Y. Kim, D. Kil, H. Oh, I. Han. 2005
113 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Dietary acidifiers appear to be a possible alternative to feed antibiotics in order to improve performance of weaning pigs. It is generally known that dietary acidifiers lower gastric pH, resulting in increased activity of proteolytic enzymes, improved protein digestibility and inhibiting the proliferation of pathogenic bacteria in GI tract. It is also hypothesized that acidifiers could be related to reduction of gastric emptying rate, energy source in intestine, chelation of minerals, stimulation of digestive enzymes and intermediate metabolism. However, the exact mode of action still remains questionable. Organic acidifiers have been widely used for weaning pigs' diets for decades and most common organic acidifiers contain fumaric, citric, formic and/or lactic acid. Many researchers have observed that dietary acidifier supplementation improved growth performance and health status in weaning pigs. Recently inorganic acidifiers as well as organic acidifiers have drawn much attention due to improving performance of weaning pigs with a low cost. Several researchers introduced the use of salt form of acidifiers because of convenient application and better effects than pure state acids. However, considerable variations in results of acidifier supplementation have been reported in response of weaning pigs. The inconsistent responses to dietary acidifiers could be explained by feed palatability, sources and composition of diet, supplementation level of acidifier and age of animals.
Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Animal Science and Zoology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7001a12197c4ffe63607530f24872de7420e9180
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In Agronomy and Crop Science
Citations in the corpus
- Exploring alternatives to antibiotics as health promoting agents in poultry - a review. (2016, background): “Capacity to decrease pH in the feed and GI tract by the organic acid likely dependent on the pH conditions of the GIT and pKa values of the organic acid used (Kim et al., 2005).”