Microbiome advances will create winners and losers

Understanding gut microbiome

Microbiome tools include dietary fibres, probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics. Each of these tools can be used to favourably modify the gut microbiome of pets.

For example, brewer’s yeast has been used in pet foods for decades. Providing a good quality protein source and savoury taste to a pet’s meal, brewer’s yeast has been a two-part success story, improving pet health and being a sustainable ingredient. Moreover, postbiotics, such as antioxidants found in brewer’s yeast, are becoming appreciated for their potential to influence health. Industries such as ethanol and sugar cane processing have provided more specialised yeast sources, further building on early learnings from brewer’s yeast.

Gathering insights

Technology breakthroughs continue to happen, leading to an improved understanding of the beneficial aspects of microbiome tools for pet health.

For the past several years, fresh pet food maker NomNom has also been selling sample collection kits that enable pet owners to obtain knowledge of the composition of their pet’s gut microbiome. This has enabled NomNom to develop a large database of information regarding pets’ gut microbiome. It will be interesting to see if significant insights can be obtained that enable the development of next-generation microbiome-based products that improve pet health.

Postbiotics

Meantime, ingredient suppliers have been developing new sources of postbiotics to improve the health of pets. The grandfather of this science is Adare Pharmaceuticals, which has a postbiotic source that dates back over a century to its original use in humans. A relative newcomer, Diamond V (Cargill), has committed significant research funding that has shown direct immune enhancement benefits to otherwise healthy dogs when consuming a postbiotic source.

Segmentation is key

Segmentation is key to gaining the most value from microbiome tools. Segmentation can involve life stages and/or conditions such as immune issues, weight management, and gut stress. Segmentation can also involve identifying pets with abnormal gut microbiota populations, making the individual susceptible to poor glycemic control, overeating, yeast infections, and so forth. Since consumers often respond best to products that contain a specific technology that can give real-life observable differences, improved segmentation based on gut microbiome differences holds a lot of promise.

Precision nutrition

Precision nutrition relates to feeding the individual according to what it specifically needs. Several scientific areas are maturing which will enable precision nutrition for an individual pet’s microbiome: firstly, low-cost microbiome diagnostic techniques; second, a wide variety of product-friendly microbiome tools such as various postbiotics; and third, increasing consumer knowledge of the importance of the microbiome.

This confluence of factors is creating commercial opportunities for innovative pet food brands to capitalise on designing precision products for specific health-enhancing purposes in pets.

Have you devoted enough focus on your present business to leverage discoveries from the microbiome field into your pet products? This is a rapidly advancing and expanding scientific field that will differentiate products and brands.