Innovate Animal Ag announces new Technology Grants program

Innovate Animal Ag will take an active approach to grantmaking: for each technology that Innovate Animal Ag supports, they will stay involved at every stage of development until the technology has reached its full potential.

Grantees will also have access to Innovate Animal Ag’s expertise and network across animal agriculture and Silicon Valley.

Advancing electron beam inactivated bacterial vaccines

The first grant for USD 100,000 will go to the lab of Dr Adnan Alrubaye from the University of Arkansas to advance electron beam inactivated bacterial vaccines.

For many years, antibiotics played a crucial role for animal health in the poultry industry. However, in 2012 the US’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new guidance restricting the use of antibiotics in livestock production.

Over the subsequent decade, antibiotic usage on farms decreased substantially and coinciding with this, all-cause mortality increased from a low of 3.7% to almost 6%.

While a reduction in medically important antibiotics has been important to help stop the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the new FDA guidance has left producers with fewer tools to protect birds against bacterial pathogens.

Electron beam offers a new path forward to improve bird health without antibiotics. Electron beams inactivate bacteria through targeted destruction of only the DNA, leaving surface proteins intact, enabling the chicken’s immune system to generate a highly accurate immune response.

Compared to other chemical inactivation methods, electron beam inactivated vaccines have shown to be much more effective in initial academic studies.

Dr Alrubaye’s lab at the University of Arkansas has already shown remarkable early results in mitigating one of the primary bacterially derived health issues for poultry: BCO (Bacterial Chondronecrosis with Osteomyelitis) lameness.

Their electron beam inactivated staphylococcus vaccine reduced BCO lameness by 50%. Innovate Animal Ag’s initial grant will go towards supporting this important research.

Protecting birds against the full range of negative health effects

Looking ahead, the true potential of the technology lies in its ability to protect birds against the full range of negative health effects that are caused by bacterial pathogens, while lowering barriers to access the ‘no antibiotics ever’ category.

To support this work, Innovate Animal Ag is looking for broiler producer partners to run a large-scale commercial trial to assess the impact of electron beam vaccines on other broiler performance metrics such as feed conversion ratio and growth rate.

“It’s never been more important to support the American innovators pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in animal agriculture,” said Robert Yaman, CEO of Innovate Animal Ag.

“Especially as federal research funding comes under pressure, Innovate Animal Ag is stepping up to help promising technologies cross the ‘valley of death’ between academic discovery and commercial adoption. This is just the first of what I hope to be many new innovations that Innovate Animal Ag can help support.”