Bio-actives: what is the potential role of postbiotics in pet foods?

In the age of Covid-19, consumer awareness about health, cleanliness, care for themselves and their families is higher than ever before. While the current crisis will pass, impact on consumer behaviour is likely to be lasting and presents a unique opportunity to better design and promote how pet foods and treats improve health.

Spotlight on the microbiome

Even before Covid-19, pet owners’ anxiety levels were already raised in view of concerns about a possible relationship between grain-free pet foods and dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). And long before grain-free and DCM was an issue, the role of the microbiome in health was already capturing attention.

Today, broadly applicable scientific advancements in the microbiome are steadily increasing and the human microbiome project, combined with the development of advanced and cost-effective genetic tools, has contributed to an increasing emphasis on microbiome science.

Challenge of probiotics

With advances in understanding the role of probiotics (live microorganisms) in affecting the health of many species, a compelling opportunity presents itself to address pets’ health too. Probiotics offer several benefits to the host, including antagonism to pathogens, favourable microbial shifts to combat diseases like obesity and diabetes, boosting immune response, reducing inflammation, influencing the gut-brain axis, and so on.

However, the primary product forms available to pets, extruded and retorted, are not conducive to probiotics’ ability to survive the expected shelf-life of these products.

Postbiotics potential

Thankfully, there are also other ways to achieve these benefits without using live organisms. A number of scientific studies show the benefits of postbiotics. A postbiotic is any non-living entity resulting from probiotic culturing that can have a beneficial effect on the host.

Currently, postbiotic sources are added to some degree to pet foods, such as brewers’ yeast (for example, from F.L. Emmert, Leiber), yeast cultures (for example, from Diamond V and Jeneil Biotech), and fractions of yeast (for example, mannan-oligosaccharides from Alltech, Lallemand and Ohly, and β-glucans from Kerry and Lesaffre). But widespread adoption of these ingredients is still lacking.

Other postbiotic opportunities exist as well. Lallemand markets tyndallized (heat-killed) probiotic products. Adare Pharmaceuticalsmakes a heat-deactivated probiotic grown under unique conditions to produce active postbiotic compounds. The company Targedys has identified the ability of a unique bacteria, , to produce a heat shock protein that induces satiety – just one example of the future role that postbiotics can play.

Grasp the opportunity?

Postbiotics present an exciting opportunity for pet food manufacturers. Given the current global concern over disease, a seismic shift of consumer concern is about to occur. How will you and your company participate in one of the greatest opportunities to apply real-world science to improve pets’ lives?

Greg Sunvold