Kemin Industries

Elliot Neto

As a Technical Service Manager at Kemin Industries, Elliot Neto oversees the research in terms of ruminant nutrition to test and develop new products. He has so been pursuing his Ph.D. at Newcastle University in the UK over the years. After completing that, he began researching and creating new techniques for evaluating secondary metabolites from plants in vitro and how they may be used to control room fermentation. Then, he relocated to Canada to pursue a postdoc. Elliot has always worked in the fields of Roman physiology, Roman metabolism, and Roman nutrition, along with his expertise in industry.

What are the trends and challenges you have witnessed happening in the biotech space over the years?

Over the past few decades, the agricultural sector has become increasingly technology and biotech focused which brings two main challenges. The first is the development of sustainable practices in the agribusiness sector, which will help us find environmental solutions. Of course, these difficulties also present opportunity for our industry. My region in particular has seen the development of rumen protective amino acids, and these amino acids are utilized to precisely feed dairy cows and beef animals.

And by precision feeding, we're able to provide farm animals and other livestock the proper amounts of food so that they can make proteins and grow. I'm referring to metaline, lysine, and triphala. In order to attain high sustainability, the industry is increasingly tending to feed the animals a highly specific, balanced diet. Hence, we precisely measure and feed the animals the required amount of these amino acids. As we have been setting the standard for the sector in terms of balancing and feeding amino acids to ruminants for the past two decades, we have witnessed an increase in client acceptance.

The second challenge is biosecurity and maintaining it along the entire food chain. We have been working on technologies for quality control of the products that we serve to the industry and that we use to assist the customers with their production corporations. We need to make sure that the feed that animals and other livestock are receiving is clean, free of major contaminants, and free of heavy metals.

These are the main two issues I can now identify, and each time one of these issues arises, a new opportunity for the sector arises. Because new technologies are created and new solutions are emerging from our laboratories, we can guarantee that the production methods we employ on farms and in the industry will keep consumers safe and satisfied. We are making every effort to increase the number of animals produced for every unit of chemicals released into the environment, such as methane and nitrogen.

What are some of the point of discussion that go into a leadership panel or is there any strategies to mitigate these challenges?

The conversations we conduct and the solutions we offer are all centered and concentrated on precision feeding. Therefore, when we fed beef cattle and dairy cows decades ago, we were discussing crude protein levels. And that's a fairly general measurement of how much crude protein is present in feeds; it is based on the amount of nitrogen contained in that particular feed. But now that we are feeding those animals, we have abandoned the idea of crude protein and are instead balancing their meals with metabolizable amino acids.

And when we use the metabolizable amino acids, we can precisely calculate how many of the amino acids in the feed will enter the bloodstream and be utilized by the tissues for growth, milk formation, or reproduction. In general, the production efficiency of modern farm animals is increasing significantly.

As a result, we are using very advanced technologies, such as Roman bypass amino acids, to address the current challenge of environmental preservation. Also, as new versions and products enter the market, we need to make sure that we are tracking how much nitrogen and methane is excreted in this diet and what advancements we are making over time.

In 12 to 18 months, how do you envision the biotech industry evolving in terms of some of its potential disruption and transformation?

Big data is the first factor. There are many massive software programs that are collecting huge data as they can, especially on farms. We can now detect and analyze those massive data sets to determine whether to adjust the nutrition plan based on the amount of feed the cows receive daily, how much milk they produce, how much protein and fat are in the milk, and other factors. Few months ago, we began to notice a pattern in how technology was transforming the data. Big data and big analysis are so altering and upending the sector since we now have greater assurance and superior analytical capability to manage what occurs on farms.

The micro biome and how it affects animals and how it can alter the meals that humans eat would be another important subject. By using genetic sequencing, we can identify what kinds of microbial populations are working on a certain animal or farm animal, how these microbes are assisting the animals' immune systems, and even how this micro population is assisting behavior in the production setting. Again, by being aware of the microbial population's and the key species that predominate in a given situation, we may alter the population's dynamics and so increase animal productivity, health, and resistance to some of the current field difficulties.

Since we can now use probiotics, prebiotics, or postbiotics to give farm animals a better chance of fighting diseases without the need for antibiotics while leaving no residues in the feed for humans or very little of them, we can now reduce utilization of antimicrobials for farm animals.

Another important area is Gene editing that will shape the industry's future. Therefore, some technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas9, enable us to identify the genetic sequencing, discover which genes are dominant in particular animals, and understand how those genes are causing some particular animals to produce at a faster rate. We can now transfer those genes to other animals to make them as productive as the model animals. Although gene editing is still in its infancy right now, it is a field that is developing quickly, and I think that within the next ten years or so, it will definitely be more prevalent in the biotech industry.

What would be your single piece of advice to the young professionals in the field?

I would advise to get a research degree who wants to be professionals in the industry. The reason for that is we now have artificial intelligence, which enables us to ask questions and receive precise information in response from the computer. When you earn a degree in research, you are taught how to create experimental designs, evaluate the data you collect from a given experiment, and once you have the data, interpret it. You also learn how to extract the key information from the data. And I don't think intelligence, whether it is natural or artificial, will ever be able to carry out that discovery process.

So, it follows that stating that having a research degree—which could be a master's or a PhD—will be very significant in the biotech industry. Again, because you need to have that mindset and those skills to be creative, to test new ideas, and to figure out how to improve that these new ideas will work for a specific purpose that we need them, you need to have a professional in your team. You can only have that group of skills if you were trained inside a good university, doing your research skill, and doing a lot of experiments.