21 June 2021- It is almost a cliché to say that the challenges facing livestock producers are growing. There’s the need to reduce waste and alleviate pressure on existing resources by better utilizing new feedstuffs. There’s the requirement to reduce the use of antibiotics to preserve their efficacy. The need to reduce mortality and improve lifelong performance with improved early life nutrition. The need to adapt to increasingly warm conditions worldwide. And the need to minimize livestock’s environmental footprint in terms of water consumption, nitrogen and phosphorus emissions, and various other sustainability metrics.
Adisseo recognized that taking on this intimidating list of challenges will require a vast mobilization of resources, both economic and intellectual. Its own answer is the Adisseo Research Grant: funding of EUR 1 million over three years, to be split between 2-3 collaborative research projects in swine and poultry, addressing the issues described above (which it refers to as the “five feed industry challenges”). The call for pre-proposal grant applications is currently underway and will remain open until the end of June 2021; an announcement of the short-listed research projects will be made at the end of July; and a full grant application dossier will have to be submitted by mid-September for the final selection by the scientific committee whose members are among the leading academic researchers and technical leaders of the industry.
As the period for pre-submission draws to a close, Feedinfo spoke with Jean François Rous, Adisseo’s Executive VP for Innovation, to better understand the project’s goals and how it maps onto Adisseo’s own objectives for addressing these critical issues.