This episode of the Pet Industry Podcast features Dr. Megan Sprinkle discussing the significance and science behind postbiotics in pet nutrition with guests from Cargill, Dr. Mark Franklin and Laurence Mills.

Dr. Franklin, with over 25 years of experience in animal nutrition, and Mills, the business development manager for Cargill in Europe, delve into the opportunities and benefits of using postbiotics in pet food. They address the lack of strong research on pet food ingredients and emphasize the importance of scientific validation in promoting pet health. The discussion includes insights into Cargill's background in fermentation, the definition and benefits of postbiotics compared to prebiotics and probiotics, and the challenges and opportunities in developing and marketing postbiotic pet products.

The conversation also touches on the consumer and brand advantages of postbiotics, including consistent health benefits across a brand's product lines and the ability to trademark licenses for marketing purposes. The episode concludes with thoughts on innovation in the pet industry and sustainability in pet nutrition.

[00:00:13] When making a decision for our pets, their health and wellness is top of mind. Wanting healthy diets for pets, gut health is a popular claim that pet parents might seek and see on packaging. Despite a lot of strong sounding claims on the market, there is a concerning lack of strong research going into the efficacy and recommended use of pet food ingredients.

[00:00:51] Mark has over 25 years of experience in animal nutrition, formulation, and product development. He has a BS, masters, and PhD in animal science. Mark is responsible for technical and customer support of Cargill’s vast portfolio across multiple species. And the pet market in Europe, especially Western Europe has some similarities to the U.S market, and as BSM Partners is going more and more global, we want to see the similar challenges and opportunities.

[00:01:28] Welcome. I'm very excited for this episode, because this is a topic that I think internally we talk a lot about. And that's one, the importance of researching your products, because we are a bunch of scientists here at BSM Partner and we do believe in the value of the research behind things.

[00:02:09] You have a PhD in animal science. You've, like I said, worked in the pet industry for a long time and are currently the global technical sales lead for pet at Cargill.

[00:02:42] Mark Franklin, PhD: Yeah, certainly happy to Megan. Thanks for the invite and look forward to visiting with you today. Cargill, as you referenced a ginormous company, do lots of different things. Looking at, at the human side, looking at the livestock side, and then focusing in specifically on the pet side, right?

[00:03:17] And so through some acquisitions over the years, we've been in this biotics/postbiotics area for 40 plus years on the pet side, and over 80 years if you look at our endeavors across the entirety of the Cargill business.

[00:03:48] Laurence Mills: Unlike other regions, such as Asia and the Americas, Cargill is a relatively new ingredient player in the European pet channel. After launching our TruPet, which is the same as TruMune in the U.S., and EpiCor Pets, around about three years ago, when I started, we've now successfully established this PET post biotic technology in the market.

[00:04:30] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: So, Cargill has a vast history and experience in pet products, but then I asked Mark to explain a little bit more about Cargill's background in fermentation to get to postbiotics.

[00:04:49] Controlling that fermentation, picking the right strains, making sure we feed the organisms the right way, and then harvesting those components out of that is really Cargill's bread and butter. So, through the DiamondV acquisition

[00:05:10] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Fantastic. In case some people are like, well, why did fermentation come up? And what does this have to do with postbiotics? Let's talk a little bit more about defining these different biotics that we tend to talk about.

[00:05:38] Mark Franklin, PhD: Absolutely. Postbiotic, a relatively new term for us, right? So, we've only had the postbiotic definition for a couple years.

[00:06:04] And so by that definition, that postbiotic is an inanimate organism that confers a benefit on the host.

[00:06:19] Laurence Mills: I would tend to describe it as the fermentation of prebiotics, which are considered the food, and probiotics, which are considered the factories, and it's then these metabolites that are then made inanimate to arrive at a postbiotic, which I consider the goods.

[00:06:45] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Looking at postbiotics a little more closely, Mark Franklin explains a little bit more about what this means for Cargill.

[00:07:02] It's the Saccharomyces cerevisiae, big word. But it's a yeast organism. And we control that fermentation through the inputs, what we feed the yeast. Then we allow those yeast to ferment, to grow, and produce metabolites. We then harvest that, dry it down, that's where the inanimate comes from, so we're not talking like many people might be familiar on the probiotic side with a CFU count, colony forming unit count, that's not us. So, we dry that down, we're inanimate, and we take everything, we take the yeast cells themselves, we take all the great stuff that the yeast made, the metabolites, and any of the media that, that the yeast hadn't got a chance to eat yet.

[00:07:57] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Exactly. And you started talking about, that it's not a live organism, which is going to be part of the benefit that we'll talk about in a minute,

[00:08:33] Mark Franklin, PhD: Yeah, absolutely. I think part of it is, as you referenced, some of the advantages of a postbiotic, and not being living, but backing up further and looking at sort of how that development came to be, we stumbled across a really interesting finding. What we noticed in our production facilities is that our plant workers didn't take sick days.

[00:09:23] So then that spun off a whole bunch of research, a whole product line development. And if you look at that, one of our postbiotics, Epicor, on the human side, we've taken that and turned that into Epicor Pets. And so, we've been doing the research on pets to dogs and cats to start to understand some of those benefits that we kind of just happened upon.

[00:10:06] So, not exactly the same parameters that we're after. But as we think about the influence that we're having on the microbiome, those bacteria that are in the gut, the gut microbiome, and the other microbiomes that exist, you know, on all of our bodies, skin and coat, oral microbiome, the gut-brain axis, how our gut affects our brain.

[00:10:48] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Yeah, I love that. Again, being a nutritionist and a scientist, getting very specific data on the species. We talk about that a lot too, in science, because dogs and cats are not identical. We have a lot in common, but they're not identical to people, and even to each other, right?

[00:11:27] Mark Franklin, PhD: Oh yeah, absolutely. There are thousands of different strains is the term that we use of yeast, thousands of different strains of even saccharomyces cerevisiae. The trick really becomes in picking the right one. Picking the right one and feeding that yeast in the right way to get the outcomes that we want,

[00:12:13] So you can imagine with thousands of different yeast strains, and that's just yeast, right? We're not even talking about all the bacterial strains that are available to us. Then that becomes an opportunity, sort of our library, if you will, if we need a new product or we have a new consumer need or an owner says, “Hey, I've been having this kind of problem, what do you think about it?”

[00:12:57] Dr Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Yeah, that is interesting. And since you brought it up if somebody was going to see this on a label, what would they see it show up on a like a pet food label.

[00:13:18] It's one of the challenges, right. And how that appears to on the label, because it's not super easily recognized by the customer, how we have to name those, name these ingredients.

[00:13:45] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: And so, it's not entirely in your control. You're following the rules. So, thank you for sharing that a little bit.

In case you're in Europe, the AAFCO equivalent in Europe is FEDIAF, so Laurence explains some slight labelling differences.

[00:14:17] In Europe, our pet postbiotics are registered as an EU feed material in the EU catalogue, not as an additive. But as for FEDIAF, then we're 100% aligned to their natural requirements. And I think that the one differential between AAFCO is on the ingredient panel in Europe, we're not restricted to an AAFCO style yeast culture description for our postbiotics.

[00:14:55] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Also, going back to some of these challenges, not only you had talked about some challenges working with all these different strains of yeast, but then comparing it back to probiotics, which are supposed to be live organisms, right?

[00:15:40] Mark Franklin, PhD: Yeah. That's a great point, Megan. That challenge of processing pet food, right? There's a reason, right? There's a very good reason that we do that from a food safety point of view. We want to produce safe food for pets, and part of that is the processes that we use. So, extrusion technology, temperatures, pressures, we look at retort on the wet side. Think of a of canning green beans on the stove. And so that preservation process, to make our food microbiologically safe, is not the friendliest to live organisms, and so probiotics have to go through all that and be able to survive, of course, to be a live organism, and then to have their effect.

[00:16:52] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Yes, and on the manufacturing side, too, there are some ways and certain strains that we can try to use to help with survivability, but a lot of times you're having to put in a very large dose to get the end result, so that's a lot of money you're putting in with the expectation you're going to lose a bunch.

[00:17:30] So speaking of let's talk about those benefits that you have found in your particular postbiotic products. I love the story of recognizing that the manufacturer workers were not getting sick. It sounds like there could be some maybe immunity benefits, but I happen to know you've done a lot of research finding a lot of different benefits.

[00:17:57] Mark Franklin, PhD: Yeah, absolutely. Really talk about them in two or three buckets here of benefit space. Gut health, so what do we mean by gut health? We can go into that a little bit more. The immunity, as you mentioned, that immune response,

[00:18:36] So, focusing in, first, on that gut health. What are we after with gut health? We want, of course, good digestibility. We want that intestine prepared to digest the food, and to absorb the food as it's digested. One of the measures that we look at there is, also what we reference as volatile fatty acid production.

[00:19:31] Because without good intestinal cell health, then we run into issues. We run into decreased digestibility and it's a little difficult concept to understand, but imagine those intestinal cells lined up right next to each other, side by side, and so they're squished together, well, that tight junction between those cells serves as a barrier property.

[00:20:19] and can really affect the health of the animal. That intestinal type junction cell integrity as part of the digestive health story is some of the things that we've looked at with our research, knowing that we have a positive effect on that. Also interplayed with immunity. We've talked about immunity a little bit.

[00:21:06] That's not what we're after when we talk about balanced immunity. What we really mean when we're talking about balanced immunity is we want those cells that sort of survey and keep watch over what's going on to be more ready to respond in case there's a challenge. And I use a little simple analogy.

[00:21:53] In my analogy, they know how many fire trucks to send to the fire. Is this two-alarm or five-alarm? And so, through the research that we've done, we show positive effects on those surveillance cells so that when a challenge is experienced, we get a faster, more appropriate response. Because if you send a all five to a two-alarm fire, if you call it a five-alarm fire and you send all those fire trucks

[00:22:32] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Yes, it makes me think of a smart immune system, right? We talk about our technology, we have dumb phones and smart phones, we need a smart immune system.

[00:23:00] Mark Franklin, PhD: Happy to. So, one of the research trials that we looked at was an in-home use test. We know from some of the pet parent insight that we've done that pet parents really want to see, “Hey, I want to see the effect in my animal.” “I want to see what this does in my home, in my neighborhood.” We get after that a little bit with the in-home use test, so we did an in-home use test with one of our postbiotics, Epicor in this case, and we asked owners a bunch of questions.

[00:23:53] they didn't know. We didn't know until after the study was over. And we had asked some questions around oral care around breath odor and owners reported back to us that they noticed a decreased breath odor in their dogs. Now, as a scientist, I'm always after that one more thing. What's the one more thing I could have looked at in a trial

[00:24:37] So we certainly know that influencing the gut microbiome can influence other body systems. What's this gut-oral microbiome connection that we might have that was expressing itself with owner reported decrease in breath odor. That was sort of an a-ha finding for us.

[00:25:28] We want to come at this from a research point of view. All the research that we embark on, we want to be published. We want to go through the peer review process. We want other scientists to take a look at that and say, “Yep, I agree. You did this right or nope, don't agree. Need to go back and try again.”

[00:25:53] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: I agree too, because I'm thinking about my own dog and wishing she had sometimes better breath and especially I did. I've been giving her a little bit of a wet topper on her food and that is when her breath odor actually did get worse.

[00:26:29] Mark Franklin, PhD: Absolutely. And I think it's interesting that you mentioned that you're putting wet topper. Very, very common, right? Put a wet topper on, on a dry food. Typically, part of the reason that we do that is for palatability. We really want our dogs and cats to really eat the food and enjoy the food that they're eating.

[00:27:25] Kind of like I tell my son, eat your green beans. Dad, I don't like green beans. Well, they're good for you. Eat your green beans. Well, I'm not going to eat my green beans. And you find them rolled up in a napkin. We can't have that with our pets. There's no other choice, right? We're providing the entire meal for them.

[00:27:47] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: I think you mentioned that that was a cat study that you saw that palatability, right? And just because that also speaks even more volumes because getting cats to think something is palatable can be really hard. I just want to acknowledge that's even bigger than it probably sounded initially. And then to go back to what you said on this product is a very small inclusion rate, 1% is really tiny.

[00:28:39] but also it can potentially reduce cost, as well to get all of these benefits. So just to acknowledge that that is really helpful. I can speak from the formulation side of things and just working with clients on who have all these values. They want what's best for the pet, but they also don't have an endless number of money either.

[00:29:21] So was there anything else that you wanted to share around the research that you have found in cats?

[00:29:47] Different metabolism, different preference, as you already mentioned, sometimes pickier. Although, I think some small dog owners would say also that they're pretty picky. But looking at the, at the cat research that we did, we saw some of the same things that we've seen in dog, around immunity, around that balanced immunity. But we saw some different responses when it comes to some of those gut health indicators. One of those, particularly as we've already mentioned around butyrate, and what we saw was a response unlike what we see in dog response.

[00:30:41] the end product. But in our cat work, we didn't see that. We didn't see that increase in fecal butyrate. It puzzled us and we said, “What's going on?” So, we backed up and we looked at the microbiome, and in our microbiome work, we track taxa, like certain families of microorganisms.

[00:31:35] So, why are we seeing decreased fecal butyrate in cat, unlike dog? Okay, let's understand the difference between dogs and cats. Cats absolutely are more efficient butyrate utilizers. Now you wouldn't think that in an obligate carnivore, but mother nature rules, right? The bugs were there, they're turned on, it looks like cats are just more efficient

[00:32:19] Stephanie Clark, PhD: Let's recap that for our listeners. TruMune can help support a balanced immune system. Epicor has some data to suggest that it can reduce breath odor. And both can be added in at low amounts in the formula. And remember, cats are not small dogs, so doing research in dogs and cats is a must.

[00:32:49] Again, repeating I think, especially in cats, because cats are just very, very unique. They're very fascinating to me. They do because they have that carnivore nature, there are going to be different things about them that are just special when it comes to their nutrition. So hopefully we've gotten people

[00:33:35] What has that been like?

[00:33:59] Most likely got probiotics down pretty good, people understand that. Start to understand some of the, of the prebiotic concepts, as you mentioned, the fibers. But now that next education step on postbiotics, how they differ, what's their advantage, it has been an education process and I would say very well received.

[00:34:46] Do I need all the other biotics in there? And so, as we continue that work, we're looking to see what those synergies might be between postbiotics and prebiotics, for example. We're early in those stages of work to start to understand that. You can imagine all the trial work that we would need to do to look at all the possible combinations and permutations of that.

[00:35:33] But in general, I would say the reception that we've got has been positive, particularly when we are able to take people through the research and look at the depth of what we've looked at.

[00:36:08] So they're, they're being used by products inside of a bigger product. What has been some of your feedback from brands? And I guess they're seeing good things too, because if they're starting to utilize it in their marketing, that's a good sign, but what are some specific things that you've heard from brands?

[00:36:49] They know it's going to be effective. I think we're starting to see that recognition more and more.

[00:37:04] Again, I'm thinking more on the formulation side of it. Postbiotics is something that we can use in dry pet food, wet pet food, treats, and beyond, unlike a probiotic. If you're having to think about your messaging on your packaging, that can be really complicated to be able to say something on one type of packaging, like your dry food, and not be able to say it on the same for your wet.

[00:37:40] All right. postbiotics, we've talked about this term, it's popping up more, pet parents are going to see this more. Now, how do they know the difference between one postbiotic versus another? Because all that we've talked about is very specific research that you've done for these particular products.

[00:38:17] Mark Franklin, PhD: Yeah. Fantastic point, Megan. What we also offer our customers is the ability to trademark license.

[00:38:45] access to all of our research. And so we can even link that up. To make it really easy for the consumer to look at that. So, by agreeing to that sort of the Cargill inside technology, you get access to all the research trials that we've done, all the results showing the benefits and really helping build that consumer confidence in Cargill Postbiotics.

[00:39:22] Megan Sprinkle, DVM: Okay. Again, it goes back to the benefits of publishing your research is that it's available for everyone to benefit and use to support the benefits of this particular ingredient in this product. So, I think that's fantastic and before we close today. Is there anything else that you would like to share and or maybe make sure that people

[00:39:48] Mark Franklin, PhD: The take home message is really threefold here. First of all, that owner insights, that owner needs and desires for health products. To really hit the sweet spot of what owners are looking for around pet health. We sit squarely in that space.

[00:40:28] But as we talked a little bit about before, I can have that across my entire portfolio of products to deliver these benefits that pet parents are seeking.

[00:40:46] Laurence Mills: There's a number of pieces from a Cargill European point of view where we're trying to give our European pet customers more reasons to work with Cargill. We're a new player and we're currently building some internal collaboration across all those existing pet product portfolio ingredients I mentioned earlier. We’ve also recently acquired Delicon, and it would be really interesting if we could start to introduce plant phytogenics into the pet world and overcome some of those toxicity challenges.

From a pet postbiotic point of view, we’ll continue to share and invest in new public research. And from a wider pet innovation market perspective, this is a personal view, but I think it would be really interesting to see how the sustainability market trends play out between the currently used animal proteins from the human food chain vs the needs of a circular economy and the use of human byproducts alongside the entrance of alternative proteins.

Thank you for joining us on the Pet Industry Podcast, a BSM Partners production. If you want to learn more about BSM Partners, please visit us at bsmpartners.net. Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and share it with a friend. We want to thank our podcast team, Dr. Sydney McCauley, Corrine Harris, Ada Thomas, Michael Johnson, Dr. Stephanie Clark, and Lee Ann Hagerty, and our amazing editor, Cliff DuVernois.