Organic Acids Mixture as a Dietary Additive for Pigs—A Review
Department of Animal Resource and Science, Dankook University, Cheonan-si, Chungnam 31116, Korea
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.
Animals 2020, 10(6), 952; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10060952
Received: 4 May 2020
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Revised: 25 May 2020
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Accepted: 25 May 2020
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Published: 30 May 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feeds and Feeding Programs in Functional Meat Production)
Simple Summary
Many countries have enforced a ban on the use of all antibiotics in animal feed as growth promoters due to public health concerns about the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. There are a variety of candidates for the replacement of antibiotic growth promoters like probiotic, prebiotics, herbs, or essential oil. Organic acids have been suggested as alternatives to replace antibiotics in the diets of animals. It is reported that the lower the pKa of the OAs, the greater its effect on the reduction of stomach pH and the lower its antimicrobial effect in the more distal portions during its transit through the GIT which eventually will have better effect on animal’s health as well as their performance. Herein, we focus on the use of organic acids’ mixture as feed additives in the diet of swine in term of their immune system, gut health, nutrient digestibility, and growth performance as well as gas emission.
Due to the increasing safety concerns about the risk of spreading antibiotic resistance in the environment, and the presence of chemical residues in animal products, using organic acids (OAs) to replace antibiotic in the diet of farm animals has increased considerably in recent years. It has been suggested that OAs could attribute to diverse elements such as antimicrobial activity, decreasing the pH of digesta particularly in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), slowing feed transit in the GIT to maximize feed digestion and nutrient absorption, inducing enzyme secretion and activity in the small intestine, and providing nutrients to intestinal tissue. It has been reported that OAs mixture might be more effective than individual OAs due to the synergistic effects of different pKa values and have a broad-spectrum activity. In conclusion, this review showed that an OA mixture, which can improve nutrient digestibility and growth performance, modulate intestinal bacterial populations and improve gut health, as well as decreasing gas emission, can be used as alternative to antibiotic growth promoters. However, the results of OA mixtures are not always consistent, and the response to dietary OAs could be affected by the type of OAs, dosage, feed formula, and the age of animals. In this review, we will give an overview of the current use of OAs mixture in swine feed.
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Keywords:
organic acids; pigs; microbial interactions; gastrointestinal tract
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Nguyen, D.H.; Seok, W.J.; Kim, I.H. Organic Acids Mixture as a Dietary Additive for Pigs—A Review. Animals 2020, 10, 952. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10060952
AMA Style
Nguyen DH, Seok WJ, Kim IH. Organic Acids Mixture as a Dietary Additive for Pigs—A Review. Animals. 2020; 10(6):952. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10060952
Chicago/Turabian StyleNguyen, Dinh H., Woo J. Seok, and In H. Kim. 2020. "Organic Acids Mixture as a Dietary Additive for Pigs—A Review" Animals 10, no. 6: 952. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10060952
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