Guests: Dr. Duarte Diaz, University of Arizona; Dr. Lon Whitlow, North Carolina State University There are a few things present in almost all environments and one of them is mold. Today on the Real Science Exchange we talk about molds and toxins in agriculture and the opportunity they have to impact the health and profitability of animals and crops.
There are a few things present in almost all environments and one of them is mold. Today on the Real Science Exchange we talk about molds and toxins in agriculture and the opportunity they have to impact the health and profitability of animals and crops.
Dr. Diaz begins by saying molds that produce toxins will grow in a building off of air particles because they are pretty adaptable. They can find a way to enter a system and produce toxins. (17:21)
Dr. Whitlow mentioned molds cause problems in addition to mycotoxins. As the mold grows, it will use some of the nutrients and the feed will have less nutritional value. In some cases, molds may use individual amino acids, so it could change the amino acid profile. (29:31)
Dr. Diaz recommends building a risk assessment model that takes into account the commodities you feed, where they’re coming from and how much of your total diet is made up of this ingredient. You use those data points to decide when to take a sample and see what is being brought in. (38:51)
Dr. Whitlow said one of the biggest effects of mycotoxins is suppressing the immune system. Dry cows are already immune suppressed so if you add the mycotoxin on top of that they don’t have any chance of getting started. You’ve got to keep clean feed in front of the dry cows and the calves. Calves don’t have the functional rumen which allows them to destroy mycotoxins. (51:55)
Dr. Whitlow emphasizes that for dairy farms management needs to be a big emphasis. Planting and harvesting at the correct time and rotating crops is vital. We know continuous corn will create more mold problems. In addition, follow best management practices for silage making and storage to reduce mold. (1:13:56)
Dr. Diaz summarizes by saying he would like to see more work on the identification of biomarkers of exposure. If we are better able to identify exposure to toxins through animal tissues or samples, we would eliminate errors associated with sampling. We would also have a solid diagnostic tool. Ideally, we’d get to a point where we can do diagnostics on-farm. (1:18:37)
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:07):
Good evening everyone and welcome to the real science exchange. The podcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell. One of your hosts here tonight at the real science exchange tonight, we have the pleasure of bringing a little something for everyone when talking molds and mycotoxins in today's agriculture. Since Mo since molds are everywhere in the environment, we have the opportunity to impact the health and profitability of all animal species and many crops. Joining us at the pub tonight, our two guests, the first Dr. Dorte Diaz was part of the real science lecture series. Back in April, he shared some of the research and mechanisms around mycotoxins. Duarte welcome to the real science exchange.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:00:54):
Hello, everybody. Happy to be here?
Scott Sorrell (00:00:56):
Yeah, it's, it's great to have you here. So part of the fun we have here to exchange Workday is sharing our favorite drinks. So what's near glass tonight for our discussions.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:01:06):
Well since I'm still on, on office hours, I will go with my academic drink of choice, which is root beer
Scott Sorrell (00:01:14):
Root beer. All right. Very well. We'll let you
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:01:16):
Go very strong, but, but it'll do the job.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:19):
All right. Good. It is beer. So that's all right. All right. I see you brought a guest with you tonight wanted, wanna welcome Dr. Whitlow and thanks for joining us here tonight, the real science exchange Lon, can you give us a quick summary of your background and then share with us how you got to know dote?
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:01:39):
I spent my career at North Carolina state university primarily in extension 90 to a hundred percent of my time was spent in extension. And that's how I got interested in mycotoxins is because we kept running into dairy herds that had problems that were unexplainable. They had good nutrition, they had good management good veterinary care, and yet there was something missing, something was a problem. And so we had a good program there in at NC state university in mycotoxins. It was real strong in the poultry area and those guys encouraged me to look at mycotoxins and the possibility that it might affect dairy cattle. So we started looking and sure enough, we did positively correlate to the level of mycotoxins to a loss in performance and problems on these dairy farms. So we started doing a little more research in that area. Most of it being applied research, and then along came DTE from Puerto Rico. And he was looking for a possibility of a degree program, and we were very happy to have him work along with us. And so that kind of got him going in this myin area.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:11):
Great. So we got the professor and the student tonight. That's awesome. All right. So you didn't tell us what's in your glass tonight.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:03:22):
I'm drinking some Puerto Rican drum on the rocks that Dorte provided. So it's it's a pleasure.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:29):
Very nice, good job. Dorte our co-host for tonight's discussion is once again, Dr. Clay Zim and clay, it's bittersweet to be back in our isolated boxes on this screen. Once again, since our last few episodes were recorded at the tri-state nutrition conference I really enjoyed being with real people with real drinks in person, but since we're back in front of our screens again tell us what's in your glass.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:03:59):
I've gone back to my old standard. I have a, a hard sider here
Scott Sorrell (00:04:03):
Tonight. All right. Very well. So tonight I switched it up just a little bit, clay, I'm drinking a beer. My son goes to wow. Yeah, believe it or not. My son goes to Penn state at the Erie campus, and they've got a little brew pub nearby, and I typically stop there when I'm out there visiting him. And this is, he brought home for me. He's back home for the summer. My favorite one beer from there. It's called blood rain. R E I G N. It's made with blood orange. So it's, it's, it's quite tasty. So cheers everyone. Thanks for coming to the real science affairs, cheer.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:04:40):
Cheers.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:04:41):
Scott Sorrell (00:04:45):
Well Dorte during the webinar, you kind of started us off with a little bit of history. One of the things that intrigued me is that the Salem witch trials had an element related to mycotoxins, but you didn't explain that a lot. Would you mind kind of going into that for us
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:05:03):
Actually, that's a pretty interesting one. I, when I finished my PhD at NC state I was trying to get a opportunity to go do a post-doctoral work in, in Europe. And we had lineup Dr. LER. I had talked to some colleagues in France and everything was line up and, and it didn't work out last minute. Didn't work out because they changed the position or something. And outta last minute, a group out of Italy contacted us and said that they would be happy to host me as a, as a, a postdoc over there. And the primary person in that group was young Franco PVA, who was the director of their nutrition program at a small school there in piensa. And he actually had a presentation that I always thought it was really unique that he he, he goes through history, major events, and he tries to find places where potentially consumption of seeds with mycotoxins based on the symptoms and the type of diets they were eating could have been associated with mycotoxins.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:06:05):
And I mean, he has about an hour long presentation where he, you know, he dwells into some of these topics. And again, some of them are purely hypothetical but some of them have actually some, some substantial information. And again, if you, if you think about the ergot ALO and some of the behavioral issues associated, especially the hallucinations then those would match very well with the symptoms seen at that time, but also with the type of diets that were predominant in, in that, in that, in that period. So there has been a couple of studies that I've looked at, you know, potentially you know, what, what, what could have been the, the associated risk and, and mostly is associated with, with ergot alos and, and those types of behavioral issues. I mean, I really think it's, it, it's pretty harsh to get burned on a steak for eating some granola
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:07:03):
But but I mean, based on that symptomology you could, you could potentially see an issue like that. And I remember you guys remember a TV show used to be called house MD. Oh yeah. It was a diagnostic MD. I remember watching that show and there was an episode where this lady comes in and she's hallucinating, right. And the only episode in that entire TV series, where actually knew what she had before, before the MDs in there. And obviously it turns out that she was she would, she would grace and Ian pick fruits and, and seeds from the forest near where she was. And she was actually eating some, some grains that were high in air got alkaloid. So there's, there's even more modern take on that. As a TV show in the, in two thousands, I guess, is what it was.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:07:57):
Yeah, very interesting. Probably probably one of the worst examples of this in history was during world Wari. And at that period of time there was certainly a scarcity of food in Europe and and farmers couldn't very well get in the field and do much. And so they left a lot of the grains in the field to over winter, and then people went into those fields during the winter or the next spring and harvested that grain. And the grain was contaminated with T2 toxin, and this is caused, caused many people to die. Very, it was a very, yeah, very severe problem. And along that same line another interesting story associated with myco toxins in history is in the early part of world war II Russia depended upon horses mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (00:09:39):
Wow. Interesting. When did we first discover myco toxins specifically, maybe in animals?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:09:47):
I think as describe, we, we, we usually use a historical Turkey X disease in, in in the UK as the, the first even compounds were isolated and, and describe, but again, you can also look back at periods of, you know, the discovery of penicillin in similar, similar fashion, again, just the compound used for two different reasons, but the, the Turkey ecstasy what was it the, what year was it? I gotta remember
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:10:19):
That's early sixties, 1962, somewhere in there. We could even go back in, in the eighteens. I mean, people knew that mold feed were wasn't bad for, for animals. They didn't know that mic, that myco toxins per se were cause of that, but they, you know, they knew we'd known that mold feed was not good for a long, long time.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:10:42):
Yeah. So, so, yeah, there's those two, two important inflections when, when the discovery of the compound started to become the norm right after that sixties discovery of AFL toin associated with aspergillus flavors and hence the name and, and that, and again, if you really look at the literature since then, the list of, you know, discovered mycotoxin is, is, is exponentially grown, you
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:11:06):
Know? Yeah.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:11:07):
If you look for him, you'll find them. I still tell people the best way not to have mycotoxins is not to test for them. So
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:11:17):
Pharmacologists look for all kinds of compounds produced by moles after the discovery of penicillin. So there were a lot of compounds discovered they weren't necessarily associated with animal disease problems or health health issues, but then as D dote says, after AFL toin was discovered in the early sixties, we started discovering all many other things like you know, a do N for example was discovered in the, in the seventies Zon and, and, and T2 were isolated about the same time and then just many, many more since that time.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:11:59):
So were, so were the, were the first issues in animals? Would that have been a poultry and swine
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:12:06):
That was at large Turkey die off? So there was, there was actually animals dying off of a Brazilian nut meal. So yeah, it was, it was, you know, chronic, acute pretty, pretty severe.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:12:19):
And, and so there was an intensive research on that at the time 19 62, 63, and very quickly they showed the death of toxin was transferred into at about one or 2% of what's consumed, goes into the,
Scott Sorrell (00:12:37):
Now is apple toxin, the only toxin that we're concerned about making its way into a tissue or, or something consumed by humans.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:12:47):
I think in general terms, if, if we're, if we're looking at the traditional cuts of meats and, and, and byproducts of, of livestock industry you know, milk is, is the one potentially risk hazard, unless you start looking at things like liver, you know, in societies or in where in populations where liver consumption is a high percentage of the diet, then that, that kind of breaks the rule, right? Cause that's a potential area where they could be some, some concentration, but the animals do a pretty good job of metabolizing and mobilizing and excreting it. There's not a lot of storage of it. There is some speculation that RA toin stores a little bit better because it's been found in hams and other cuts of meat. But I think a lot of that is probably happening at the curing stages and it's growing around it and that's how it's getting contaminated. Cause it hasn't been replicated very well in animal models.
Scott Sorrell (00:13:46):
Now I'm gonna assume that the most, if not all of the contamination comes in through the feed, is that correct?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:13:53):
Yeah. I, I, you know, we, when I was in Italy doing my postoc, we actually did some Aly. I mean, it's still coming from the feed, right. But I, we did some Aly research where we, we did emulsification of the toxins and sprayed it up the cows nose and then looked at metabolites in the blood. We did it with a toxin because at the time, you know, it was one, it was very easy to do, but we did several other ones. After we figure out that cows don't like to get sprayed inside their nose, and'll just snot it right back out to you. We, we did find several toxins that we can actually identify in the, in the, in the blood flow. And I, I suspect for human populations, you know, feed mill workers in, in, in areas where, where there's maybe not good sanitary practices or use of equipment that could be a source of, of exposure.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:14:44):
I do know also that, for example, in Kenya, when the human populations are exposed to high concentrations, a lot of is maybe there's a, there's a drought or there's a scarcity of, of grain. And so they usually dry 'em out in the ground. And in order to prevent people from stealing the corn, they would actually put it inside of their houses, like ground their house with, with that. And in those cases, those people are probably, you know, a part, a percentage of that high level of contamination that they're exposed to could be coming from an, a source. Dr. Willo can tell you a couple stories about him showing up with a bloody nose that if he wants to I learned pretty quick and I use my respirator almost all the time, but I, I have asthma you know, I developed asthma in grad school and I've had it all all along through. So I'm not sure it's, mycotoxin really, it's, it's, it's, it's actually large particles in the air related where lot dust dust particles, but yeah, there, I think the other primary source would be, you know, inhalation. But yeah, those are the primary sources.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:15:57):
Yeah. Farmer's lung is associated with breathing in mycotoxins from again, moldy feed. So feed is a source, but it does get aerosolized and and we, and we can breathe it in and that can be toxic.
Scott Sorrell (00:16:14):
Are, are any of the feed stuffs more susceptible to molds? And microtoxins whether it's feed forage, dry forage and side forage, do you have a feel for that?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:16:26):
You know, I would, I always actually answer that question in the, in the context of, I, I think, you know, corn is a great soft rate, but it's also a great soft rate because we have a lot of it. So that, that, you know, that it has a significant amount of influence in, in the occurrence of the toxin. It, it is a good substrate, but we, we grow awful lot of corn, but again, if you compare corn to soybean, then you would see that here are two grains that are, you know, that the, these two are, are produced at similar quantities, right. One much more susceptible than the other. Again, a lot of the stuff that we did when, when I was at, at NC state with Dr. Willow was actually to, to look at forage sources as a potential contaminant and identify that they not only are often contaminated, but sometimes contaminated with a different area of, of toxins that were not normally you know, looking for, or, or accounting in our, in our system.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:17:21):
So I think the substrate has a lot to do, but I also say, you know, moles and that produce toxins will grow in a building you know, off of, you know, air and particles, right. They they're pretty adaptable. They're pretty they, they, they can find a ways to, to enter in, in the system and, and, and be viable and, and produce toxins. I don't know if I said it in the seminar, but there is a really cool study in incher Novo after the Ukraine plant disaster meltdown. Yeah. When they, when they went back in the first thing that they actually saw thriving was this, this mold and what they went and actually looked at the mold. And they found out that the mold had actually adapted to use radiation as a form of energy. And that mold today is in the lunar stage or in the space station because of, of an example of a rapid adapting species. So they're putting up there to see if it's if it changes or adapted. And I, I, I wanna say it's a fusarium, but it may be, and that's Virgi, but I can't remember, but it's actually one of those MOS that we, that we normally associate with with toxins. So you know, they, they, they find a way they're pretty good at it.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:18:42):
I would, I would say all feeds are susceptible to moles and, and to producing mycotoxins. But when I talk to dairy farmers, I tell them that silage is their biggest concern. And the reason for that is the silage does make up half of the diet. And you don't bring in new loads of silage. I mean, it's, it's in the silo and you're gonna feed that all year. And so if it is contaminated, it's a, it's a big issue. But with grain, you know, you're gonna get a new load next week or next month. The other thing is that we have some very unique mycotoxins that grow in silage that we do not see in grains. And I think that's important for what the toxicity that we're seeing in cattle particularly the penicillin produce mycotoxins, which grow at a low pH and with only very little oxygen. And so they will grow in silage. And in many years, penicillin is the most prevalent mold in silage and they produce some, some pretty toxic mycotoxin.
Scott Sorrell (00:19:59):
Now, is that throughout the silage lawn, or is that just in that crust along the top?
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:20:03):
No, it's deep down. Now you could penicillin growing deep down in the, in the silage, because again, it doesn't require a lot of oxygen to be produced. And you, as you go through that silo, you may hit some spots or layers where you see a, kind of a bluish penicillium, like growth
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:20:25):
Mm-Hmm
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:20:31):
Not, not routinely, and I think we don't test for 'em because they don't occur as commonly in grain. And the ones that do occur in grain are, are not considered to be as severe. So a lot of the testing has been BA basically dictated by grain issues and by human issues.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:20:54):
Yeah. I, I think a lot of the analytical method discovery is, is driven by the commercial need. So, you know, you see a lot more robust and, and a varied best methodology for analysis for grain based issues than you would see for silage though, even though silage is a large portion of the, of the food chain in the dairy industry, it's not a large percentage of the samples most labs receive in a general basis. So there's a little less interest to be honest there isn't even an, a OAC validated method for myco Tossin analysis in silage. There is people that have done validate self validated methods in their, in their, in their labs. You know, some of the, the labs that specialize have actually gone and do that. But there isn't even at that extent, a validated method for that. So we're a little behind the curve on that, but it's mostly driven by, by the commercial need and by the, you know, the financial contribution in that aspect.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:21:55):
And, and that again is a, is a reason why I recommend to dairy producers when they're analyzing for silage to actually determine the type of mold that's present in the silage. And this will give you some indication if the mycotoxins produced better, that mold could be present. That is then, you know, related to the symptoms you see in the cow may, might give you a little better idea on how to move forward.
Scott Sorrell (00:22:25):
So is it possible to have mold and yet not have mycotoxins?
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:22:30):
Yeah,
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:22:30):
Certainly it's quite common.
Scott Sorrell (00:22:33):
Oh,
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:22:33):
There's a, probably more than half of the molds that do not produce any toxins. It's like mushrooms, you know, some of 'em are fine. They don't produce any toxin. Others are toxigenic meaning they produce toxins and they produce an array of toxins.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:22:50):
Hmm. Yeah. I mean, we, we, we talked about that a little bit is the, the, their, their function as decomposition of organic manner, they play a vital role in, as soon as you, you harvest that plant they're part of that ecology. So there's, there's all sorts of them. Some of them will be, will be beneficial. Others will be damaging. I mean, again, even if you look at the human microbiota, you know, there's, there's some populations there that are, that are beneficial
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:23:18):
On the flip side of that. Can, can you look at a feed sample and visibly tell if there will be myin issues?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:23:32):
I think, you know, long gone are the days where you can blue light corn and speculate that it had, and, and that's been disproven even at, at that, at that level. I, I think, I think any group good risk assessment model is a combination of things. I think in a perfect world, you'd be always testing, but I think in a general consensus, if, if you, if you have a, a quick decision to be made and you have a certain amount of money that you're expending on, maybe improving that situation, then you have to make decisions based on that. And sometimes, you know, taking a leap of faith and saying that feed does not look good, right. And I have the options of not continually feeding it, or maybe not. I don't have that option. Then let's start doing other things that, that might be proactive as of, as, as much as, as reactive in that context.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:24:23):
So I think a lot of people visually inspect feeds and make decisions. It, I mean, it happens almost every day. I can tell you, I, the vast majority of phone calls I get are on the opposite spectrum. I sent a moly feed to a lab. It came back with nothing, and that's the most shocking phone call that I get on a consistent basis. And I said, look, if the molds were growing there, they're happy. They're like unlikely producing my is when they get stressed that they probably produce them, or they were producing the field prior to, to harvest. So it's a, it's a really bad tool for, for diagnostic in the purest sense. But in, but in essence, you do know that if that moly is, if that feed is moly, there's probably something happened to it, right. It's not what you wanted to feed. So it, it, it drives the decisions still in the right direction, I would say.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:25:23):
Yeah, I would say it's a good thing to look at. And, and even though you test a moldy feed and it comes back with nothing, you have to remember, there are hundreds of mycotoxins and you didn't test for all of them. So if you do have problems in, in the animals and you look at the feed and it's moldy, then I would certainly test it. It's an indication that it could be the issue.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:25:49):
Yeah. I, so what those two types of people with, with mold, like those that will see their bread and see a patch of mold and just cut around it and still eat it. Those that would see some mold in that brand and throw out the entire bread. Right? Yeah. That's, that's me, you know? Yeah. That's that's perspective. I mean, if you really look at how far that mold is penetrated, it's probably better off to throw the entire bread
Scott Sorrell (00:26:15):
Right. Penicillin's good for you. Yeah.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:26:18):
Hopefully it's, it's, it's not a harmful Mo there
Scott Sorrell (00:26:22):
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:26:39):
That's, that's changing. I, I think one of the things that, that we have to really be cognizant is, is as, as, as, as this climate evolution of the last 10, 15 years occurs, it actually has changed some of the environmental conditions in some areas where there's, there's significant amount of, of production, of commodities that are used for livestock feed production. I think there, it was like a month ago, there was a paper published out of environmental research letters from Felicia woo. She used to be at Pittsburgh. I dunno if you remember at the Willow she's now at Michigan state university, and she's basically, she modeled these 20 different or 16 different scenarios of climate change. And she's actually predicting that the Midwest will have AOX and issues. And I think the time period they use is 20, 30 to 2041, right. An 11 period of in the future, because the temperatures will creep on and creeping up. And that would allow more favorable environment for, for aspergillus flavors. But when I started with, with Dr. Winlow, we used to classify mycotoxins as feed toxins and field toxins, or I mean, storage toxins and field toxins. And, you know, one of the things that was really interesting when I got to Arizona is that about 90% of our Aflo toin contamination occurs in the field
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:28:04):
There very little there's occurring post that and it's because it's so hot in here that they're creating those micro operations in the, in the kernel, and it's allowing the, the aspergillus to, to propagate and, and penetrate in that seed. But, you know, we, we we've taken molds that we histor considered mostly a, a storage problems. And, and now they're, they're being found in, in very commonly in, in, in field contamination. And I think, you know, I think that's, that's a credit to the capacity of the molds to adapt and evolve and, and, and adjust. So, so yeah, it's, it's, it has been changing. I think, again, when I run risk assessment, I run risk assessment based on two primary criteria. First, if a feed stuff is occurring in a high percentage in that diet, you know, the case of what Dr. Willow mentioned about corn silage for dairy, or let's say corn in general for Mon gastric diets. And then I look at other ingredients and I ranked them based on risk, right. Is this a, is this a material that historically has been contaminated or has been more frequently contaminated? And I classify 'em based, based on that strata. But, but you have to be on your toes because it, it changes a lot faster than you think it would
Scott Sorrell (00:29:22):
Now, aside from micro toxins are there any other problems that molds cause and feed
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:29:31):
Well,
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:29:31):
When they, when they grow in feed, they're gonna utilize some of the nutrients that of present. So the feed is gonna have less nutritional value than the original feed. And in some cases like with proteins, the moles may use individual, some individual amino acids more than others. So it will change the amino acid profile, but yeah, I'd say basically just lower nutritional value of the feed itself.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:30:02):
Mm-Hmm
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:30:50):
Although I, I don't like blue cheese. Perfect.
Scott Sorrell (00:31:35):
Mm-Hmm
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:32:01):
I would say that there's always new emerging toxins if you, if you, I mean I don't, I don't go to the mycotoxin meetings with regularity because of two primary reasons. First of all, because half of the meetings are usually focused on analytical methods and I'm not that greatly concerned about analytical methods. I think we do a perfectly good job. I wish we spent half of that time, developing sampling protocols to reduce the sampling error as opposed to getting better analytical methods. But the other half of that, those meetings are in these discoveries of these new compounds. And you know, time has told us that, you know, since we discovered Fu Moin, you know, there's, there there's been a lot of other micro have discovered, but none of them have really made it to levels of concern outside of specific substrates or nutrients.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:32:55):
You know, there, there is a good, you know, five or six new toxins that come in every, every five or six years. And, you know, some of them, we, we do analyze and, and we pay attention. But if, if you actually look at the overall literature of toxicologically base research, we're still doing 95% of the research on AFLA toxin, D O NT, two toxins surrounded. And fumin, so mm-hmm,
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:33:39):
So it became the, the newest emerging toxins. But I, I, I mean, I get questions all the time and I try to tell 'em, I'm having a hard time with the fives that I focus on and get along all, all the ones that get discovered. I usually start getting exciting when we excited, when I start seeing some survey papers that are saying it occurs in more high frequency. We obviously have our list of five or six ones that we wish everybody else was talking about. And, and again, Dr. Willow mentioned a good chunk of those are those that are associated with with you know, silage. I, I think we don't do enough on ochratoxin personally. I think it's a, a pretty important mycotoxin and then some of those, all penicillin mycotoxins that, that are probably pretty frequently out there that, that, that we, we don't do enough with
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:34:33):
There. There's another aspect of, thatin probably havein for many, and they do interact. They do synergize with each other and, and contribute to increased toxicity, but we don't really understand all of that. We don't, we're not, we're not really able to, to offer up exactly how that occurs and how severe it is, but we do know that some of these more obscure or minor mycotoxins do contribute to the overall toxicity.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:35:20):
Yeah. Experimentally, what you see. So they'll put that in a really in a, in a study to try to demonstrate the toxicity and ends up being a pretty high concentration. And again, I think the complexity, we went through that even through my masters in PhD work, right, where we want to, we want to look at a diet that's similar to what the animals are consuming, but if you have four toxins in there, can you actually characterize what the toxic is of, of, of the individual components of that? So it creates a very, it creates a complex experimental model when, when, what you're actually trying to mimic is, is what's, what's at what's happening in, in, in, in nature, right at the farm mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (00:35:59):
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:36:04):
Dete, you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, about issues with sampling for myco toxins, and you, you talked about that some during the real science lecture as well, how should these samples be handled when they're submitted to a lab
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:36:20):
Collected or handled,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:36:22):
Handled?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:36:23):
Well, both. Okay.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:36:24):
Ship during shipment.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:36:26):
It's a, I mean, it kind of depends if you, if you're actually just going for microtoxin, you wanna refrigerate them and try to stabilize them. If you want to get mold spores and, you know, mold counts, and you have to be a little more careful about how severe, you know, the, the environmental control is, but definitely not in the, in the dash of the truck for six hours before you send it to ups. I think, yeah, you want to try to stabilize it as much as you can. I, I think, I think clay, I have more problems with how bad the samples are collected than how they are handled for the most part, because even if you have protocols, people just don't wanna spend the time to collect the right sample. And I mean, it's is basic human nature, but, you know, mycotoxin analysis are not cheap.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:37:15):
I mean, they're, they've actually gotten more expensive than they were before. I mean, it's, it's more expensive now to analyze for mycotoxin than it was probably 30, 40 years ago. And, and if you're not gonna collect the right sample, it, it, it just Bo I mean, that's, that's a really, you know, it's something that I, I struggle with. I mean, I go to a lot of meetings and I hear people arguing about H P C is not good enough. We need to GC mass bag do this. And I'm like, if you collecting a that's, I was gonna say a bad word. So if you're collecting a bad sample, what does it matter if you got a $500,000 piece of equipment behind your analytical capability, I'd rather you do Eliza and take 20 samples, or take one good sample than to do, you know, one bad sample with a GC mass bag.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:38:03):
So I, I, yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, that's, I tell people all the time go to a specialized lab, ask them how to collect the sample and ask them how to ship the sample. And if it's a, if it's a lab that knows how to do mycotoxin analysis, they will have a document that will send to you that says collect sample, like this, trying to get as many places in that, mix it, do this, and then stabilize the sample before shipment. I mean, you could also dry the sample, you know, if you want to truly stabilize it, right.
Scott Sorrell (00:38:34):
Yeah. Yeah. So what's a good MI toxin testing program look like should, should all farms be testing for mycotoxin, should they be testing all feed stuffs? Should they be testing throughout the year? What, what does it look like? What's your recommendations?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:38:51):
I, I try to recommend building a risk assessment model before you get to that point because it's, it's gonna be very different in Florida than it's gonna be in Arizona. It's gonna be in Wisconsin or in California. So based on, on a general risk assessment model, you're gonna take into account the commodities that you have and where they're coming from. And then you're also gonna take into consideration what Dr. Willow talked about is how, how much of your total diet does that ingredient contribute? And then a combination of that, of those data points will allow you to say you know, let's take sample every time we open a silo and every time we're three months into it, and at the end, right at the critical points or whatever, whatever those are decided in the system and the same for a large batch of corn coming, that's a good time to actually get a broad sample and see what what's being brought into the system.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:39:48):
Again, in Arizona, we, we, we spend a lot of time talking about cotton seed. I mean, I, I, I get in trouble all the time, but I, I, I don't like seeing cotton seed in, in Arizona dairy operations, because it's, it's an incredibly risky to, to get a tank load of, of mild getting rejected for a commodity that, yeah, it's a great feed stuff, but it, you, you don't have to have it. Right. So I, I base, I base those on those on those appoints, I am never been a really huge fan of TMR testing because it, it gets, it puts me in a position where I still have to figure out which one of the ingredients is the one coming from contaminated. Yeah. but I also understand the value, right. If you're doing a, a protocol based on, you know, every time we have major changes is that maybe you can do a TMR and then go back to the, to the traditional individual ingredients. But that's usually how I, I try to address it on a, on a regional or individual basis.
Scott Sorrell (00:40:50):
Mm-Hmm,
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:40:51):
I, I agree with dote about the risk assessment. I think for, for, for most producers, they evaluate the animals, their records, they look to see if production has changed. Has there been any change in health condition of the animals, any spike and any, any change at all? That's detrimental there also just evaluating feeds by visual observation and looking, looking, looking at it for the quality. I mean, it doesn't tell you if the mycotoxins present or not, but it gives you some indication if that could be a part of the problem. So evaluating the herd first, that risk assessment is probably the first way to go. I, I don't, I don't normally recommend that every producer analyze on any kind of a routine basis, but rather evaluate their own situation and then develop a, a plan from there. I think dote is absolutely correct.
Scott Sorrell (00:41:58):
Yep. Makes sense. So let's say you've tested some forages or grain. You've got a mycotoxin problem. Now, what do you feed that that feeds stuff, do you discard it is dilution the solution where do it go from here?
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:42:17):
Well, there's a number of steps and I'll probably leave some of them out. I won't remember everything, but it depends on the level of toxin that you've got in the feed. Certainly want to keep any kind of contaminated feed away from the dry cows. And, and if you're feeding calves, calves are gonna be more susceptible, dry cows will be more susceptible. So you may be able to shift the feed around if you're grouping cow, shift it around so that the animals that are most susceptible receive the cleanest feed. And, and I tell dairyman that because very few people are gonna throw feed away, right. They're gonna try to use it some way somehow. So that's the first thing. And then dilution is, is the next thing to look at. You've gotta be a little bit careful about dilution because once you dilute the feed, the mold can continue to grow and produce mycotoxin.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:43:21):
So you may end up back where you starting. You can look at, you need to look at management of your feed stubs, for example, do you take silage out of the silo and stack it somewhere for two or three days before you feed the CALS? You know you could be getting a microtoxin growth or production in that in that pile look at things like treating the silo face with some organic acids to reduce mold growth, at least on that feeding surface. And then those organic acids will go into the TMR when you feed it and help keep the TMR stable. And of course if, if you find it in grains then you, you might then go to your supplier and talk about replacing a, a contaminated feed because it's really illegal to be selling a moldy contaminated feed mm-hmm
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:44:39):
I'll add up a couple ones, you know the first one being that delusion can also be tricky in the context of, of Aflo toin because you know, there's, there's some very specific guidelines that, that don't allow you to dilute the fee once, you know, it's over the legal allowed limit. So that has to be done within the context of understanding what, what the law and what the requirement is for the other. Microtoxins it's a perfectly sound idea, but you also have to think about, for example, if you, if you get a toxin, like Serone where seral can be more problematic, depending on the period of the reproductive cycle of the animal, if you dilute Serone, now you're gonna have potentially more, I time points where animals are gonna be at the right part of that reproductive cycle to have issues.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:45:24):
So, you know, I, I wish it would be super straightforward, but you have to consider that depending on the toxin. What, what what kind of strategy? I also remember one that the doctor with me Whitlow told me very early on that it didn't make sense initially, but as, as you explained, it, it made a perfect sense, which is, you know, you may actually have to feed more of that silage. Sometimes we are not moving enough of the silage phase in that silage, and then all that exposure to action is actually what's triggering a lot. So if you actually went and bumped up silage intake into that diet or amount to that diet, then you're now actually going to the recommended guidelines of moving the silage phase and, and while minimizing the amount of oxygen exposure and growth.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:46:12):
And then at the end of that exercises, where we start looking at, can we feed the animals you know, additives or in products that may have beneficial impacts on that animal health? Like obviously anything that could potentially damage intestinal you know, integrity, you know, you could, it could be very well remediated by products that have intestinal health as a, as a mode of action, or obviously the traditional binders that we've studied over the years where the objective is to find a compound that attracts to and binds to the toxin and reduces the, the absorption throughout the GI tract. But there's, there's other things, you know, for example, I've used any oxidants pretty regularly on poor quality silages because I think apart from the mycotoxins in those poor quality, silages, you also have, you know, free radicals that are being formed from the oxidation of the fats in, in that, in that material.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:47:16):
And also could happen in, in many of the other ingredients that we have high energy ingredients that we have. So that's where you start thinking about strategically, what can I include into this diet to maybe help these animals cope or, or, you know, pass through this, this, this period. Again, pro all of those are proactive. At the same time, I think you actually have to be looking at what is the cost so that you can potentially prevent it from happening in the future. Right? So if the, if the cost was a corn grain that came from Pharex, then you need to have that conversation, because next year, you don't wanna do that. Or if it's corn salads that came from your own facility, you may wanna look at, you know, did you harvest at the right time at the right moisture? Did you compact correctly? I use a good inoculate all those things. So you, you wanna do your action activity at the same time. You wanna reserve some time to make sure that, that you correct the errors that led to, to that problem moving forward.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:48:18):
Now, if you're a nutritionist and you're looking at how do I change my ration formulations, because I have mycotoxins then as dote says, adding some of these products that help prevent toxicity is certainly important. The other thing is we talked earlier that mold growth itself reduces the nutritional value of the feed. So we may want to increase the nutrient levels to somewhat, we know that some mycotoxins reduce protein synthesis, and it's been shown that do N for example, is associated with less microbial protein production in the Roman. So we may want to increase the protein level in the diet for that reason. Then antioxidant nutrients can be very important. Things like calcium vitamin E Z. These are all antioxidant nutrients and then there are other commercial provided Neu antioxidant nutrients that can be used.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:49:31):
So those are a few things I, I think I'd like to emphasize that we need to try to maintain a robust Ru fermentation because the dairy cow is going to destroy a lot of mycotoxins in the Ru. Now, if we cause acidosis and shut down the Ru, then we're gonna have a lot more toxicity. So we want to maintain a good Ru fermentation that may mean adding buffers to the diet. Certainly maintaining good fiber levels, but definitely not pushing their cows too hard to try to increase milk production. We've seen this before. I've seen it a lot of times, is that in that a dairy farm sees a loss in milk production. And so they think, well, my, my diet, my rations, just not hot enough. I need more energy in that diet. So they push more energy and before long they're causing acidosis, and if this is a mycotoxin problem, then their problem just gets worse and worse.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:50:35):
Founding you
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:50:37):
So long. You mentioned, you mentioned a few minutes ago about keeping containment and feed away from the dry cows. Yeah. So I think I've asked you this question in the past, but I was asked this question again last week. So I get this question a few times every year, where a herd will run into an issue where either the the heifers that are Cav calving in for the first time or mature cows, they're not producing colostrum. There's a lack of colors osteogenesis in these cows. Is there any relationship between myosis and the lack of colors production?
Dr. Lon Whitlow (00:51:23):
I'm not aware of any data that's really clear on that, but there is some data, and, and it's not most of it's not in cattle
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:52:45):
Mm-Hmm
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:52:46):
Yeah. I would claim that if you, if you look at the overall data, again, this is not rooming the data, but the Mon asterisk data, there there's a ton of data that, that shows reduction in immunoglobulins in mycotoxin expos animals, right. I mean, in, in general, surgeons is, is one of the go-to experimental observations, right. And, and a lot of these, these studies. So it, it would make sense that if, you know, circulatory levels of immunoglobins were, were low, it would affect the, you know, the quantity in the, in that colos offering. So that's, that's fairly, fairly well documented in that. As you guys know, Ru research has the challenge of us having to need a lot of mycotoxin contaminated feed to be able to feed a handful of cows, and then having to explain the statistical geniuses of our societies that, you know, it's not, I, I didn't have 50 cows, I just couldn't afford them.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:53:45):
So it, it, it, it, you know, we, we extrapolate a lot of that from, from the, from the Mon gastric research arena. The other thing I would say though, clay is that, you know, right now, when we, we having all these conversations about epigenetics, and again, I'm, I'm involved in that because of the the heat stress work that we do here, but I find those complimentary, you know, the same thing is if you're, you're exposing that cow at a very critical time period you know, to, to some contaminated feed that is making her make adjustments to be able to, to function. Normally that's gonna potentially have an impact on not only her, but the, the, the quality and the, the, the productivity of that, of that offspring. And that's one of the things we would like to do here is we would like to put together this, this heat stress, low mytoxin heat, stress combination model to see that, that, you know, you don't, you don't always need to have 120 degree temperatures, or you don't always need 7,000 parts per billion of the specific mycotoxin it's, those life happens every day.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:54:57):
Right? And it's, and those, those things combine very well to, to cost challenges as in the system.
Scott Sorrell (00:55:05):
I wanna circle back to something both of you guys mentioned earlier, and that's feed additives, and typically producers nutritionists, one of the first things they're gonna reach for, if they've got a mycotoxin problem is a mycotoxin binder. If we could have kind of a brief discussion around the, the types of mycotoxin binders, and we'll not use trade names, but, you know, we've got your clays, you've got your Geel walls. There's there's mycotoxins that products that denature them. I don't know if it's in vivo or I said to, I don't know where it happens, but may, maybe just kind of an overview of the, the different classes of micro toxin binders mode of action positives and negatives. I, I know if that's, that's a big question, but
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:55:53):
It's, it's a, it's a, it's a really large category. I think if you, if you look at the market and the size of the market the first of all is you have to really understand that they are additives, that you are feeding for different reasons that may be beneficial during a myco toxicosis like we spoke before, you know, supplementing with an antioxidant increasing vitamin E. These things could actually also be beneficial in my toxicosis and they're not necessarily being sold or being utilized specifically as a mycotoxin solution. I think the term binder is a little bit of a disservice on the complexity of the, of the discipline. I think Dr. Willer and I tried to coin the sequestering agent because it didn't have a definition in the dictionary and nobody could claim that we didn't bind per se because you're not always binding sometimes as attractions or, or fitting into a pour or, or getting, you know, just reducing the exposure to the, to the gastrointestinal track, right?
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:56:55):
So I think the, the categories can be really broad. And once you start removing those that are compounds that offer benefit independent of exposure to mycotoxin, and then you have this category that is mycotoxin solutions, right? Where there, you could have the category that is more compounds that are designed to reduce the absorption through the GI tract, through some type of interaction, whether that's binding, whether that's poor size, you can even think about potentially feeding in antibody coded that would just destroy the capacity of it passing through the, through the gastrointestinal tract. Then you start getting into categories of, of products that are different mode of actions, maybe compounds or enzymes that are breaking down the molecule or changing the molecule structure, and then potentially decreasing the toxicity of that compound. Those can be kind of tricky because you have to demonstrate that the compound that you changed it to is first less toxic, but also not gonna reconvert back into, into the toxic compound.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:58:06):
I think in most cases, the, the compound that we talked about, right? The AFL toin, ISAL the T2 toin. It's really not the toxic compound. It's usually converted in the liver into some in epoxide. That is actually what's, what's truly the active. So, so we have to explore those, but the categories are broad, right? We have a lot of products that are either trying to interfere with absorption or trying to disrupt absorption through changing on the molecules. But what you end up seeing in the market is a lot of products that try to do several things at the same time. And I think, although that is a really good strategy because you have different mycotoxin and, and the capacity to potentially admit, let's say, absorb some of those, or are gonna be more difficult depending on the structure. What happens is that we, we need to really understand what the minimum effective dose is of each individual compound before you make a mix of them.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:59:02):
If I make myself clear, and I'm saying that if you take, if you take three known products that work, but you know, they work at one gram and you feed all three of them at half a gram, you now made a super product that doesn't work, right? Because you failed to meet the minimum effective dose of the individual components, right. And they're not complimenting each other to, to, to become better. So I think that's where we are right now in the, in the, in the landscape, we have a lot of companies that are doing some innovative things, or they're trying to do some, some mixtures of, of combinations, but I, I still think we, we need a little bit more work on titrating out doses, being better cognizant of, of what it needs. I, I think what I always try to tell people is, you know, if you think about parts per billion or parts per million, right, it's a very, very small amount.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (00:59:53):
You have to be able to put something in that diet that has an effect on that very small amount, less of, of something is always not necessarily good, right? I mean, you may need a little bit of a higher concentration of those, but I think that's where the current marketed, I think there is some really innovative things that have coming out with, for example, enzymes that may potentially deconstruct or change that molecule again, they still need to prove that it's happening at the GI tract because the other challenge is that allow the toxins are absorbed passively to the GI tract and it occurs quite quickly. So if your enzymatic reaction requires a pH of three, by the time you get to a point where you have a pH of three, you probably already absorbed a considerable amount of, of that. Th those are the kind of things that, that I think are evolving in, in the discipline, but the binders have been really good. I mean, the binders have done a fairly good amount of, of work for a very long time. And there's still very, very much use around the world. Probably the, the primary mode of action worldwide is, is the traditional binding type of products.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (01:01:08):
Dote did a good job of summarizing all of that. And what I might add is that in Europe, they have a process for approval of products in the us. We have no system for approval of these products. And I think we need to move in that direction. One of the problems, one of the problems we have with approval is that ALA toxin being a carcinogen can't be allowed in feed, right? We do have action levels, which is different from a allowable level, let's say. And if you use a product against alein you would have to show that it's completely eliminated, or you still have a carcinogen in the feed. So this becomes a difficult issue, but we need to work in the direction of trying to get an FDA approved process for approval
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:02:18):
Of these products. I, I went to a meeting once where Dr. Winlow asked U S C a person, what it would take. And I I'm the kid you not, the person said not until I'm dead. Now, I would, I would, I would say he, he is probably, I shouldn't say that. I mean, he was, he was fairly old at that time. So I, I think it's probably a good time to maybe potentially start putting a little bit of pressure into the system. Brazil has regulatory limits and they actually have a category. Also the union European union has one. I think if they actually look back and, and what their intention was, right, the intention of not creating a category was to not permit people, to sell products that were contaminated, because there was a solution for it. But if they look back what they actually did was nobody followed the rules, right.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:03:16):
There was no option. So the option was to continue feeding, these materials that were contaminated. I, in this paper that I was quoting, they, they said. And the thing that, you know, the, when material is over the legal loud limit, you know, in the United States, people destroy the, I spent a lot of time traveling. You guys spent a lot of time traveling. I speak with a lot of producers, our Millers, I don't see a lot of material being destroyed anywhere. Mm-Hmm
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:04:03):
Mm-Hmm
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:04:59):
I was talking to some people recently I recommended that they updated the task book. Remember when that was published after Whitlow, remember the cat, remember, I don't remember the date
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:05:51):
They, they're not in the business of doing research. So I hopefully all that happened. I, I will tell you another side of that. Tell Dr. Winlow, because I probably haven't told him that I still haven't managed to train one single student that has stayed on the mycotoxin field. So I don't know if that is a, a credit to yours and my stubbornness but most of them realize that it's tough out there for, for it, and then end up working in, in other areas. So that's another problem that we need to solve. You know, we used to be us used to be leading research institutions, in Myas and research right now about 60 to 70%, I just checked off the research being published on mycotoxin is coming outta China, South America and, and Europe. We, are definitely not on the leading front anymore on that.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (01:06:46):
Yeah. There's a real problem with research in in all MyIT and especially in room and it's there's there for a researcher in, in the university system, there is no money and they have to have money and they have to produce research in publications. So they're not gonna work in the mycotoxin area and especially in remnants. And so we need to look at if this is a, if this is a real issue for people, we need to look at ways to increase the funding, to get the research done. It's real frustrating to get these questions about mycotoxins and we've been looking at this for, well, as, as said, we really started in the early sixties. So we've been going on 60 years and we're not conducting enough research to answer the questions that people in the field really have.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:07:48):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I have a couple colleagues that have attempted to do one mycotoxin study and then call me back and said, oh, don't send me anybody else. I'll never do that again.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:08:42):
So I, you know, it, it wouldn't be really easy for me to do that. So I, I think it it gets challenging. And it's, it's, it it's, it is only gotten more challenging. We try to do five experiments. We put together this whole protocol of T2 toxin. There's a ton, of missing information on T2 toxin. And, and we got letters from the department of defense that said that we, the only certain people had authority to buy more than a certain amount of T2 toxin. And, and we weren't one of them. So we, we moved to, we moved to Alano. So it is, it is challenging. I, I do still think that there is a need and I, I, I would like to see more people in academia get involved in, in this area of research.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:09:30):
I think, you know, we, we get some people that are curious, but at this point in the room inside the only people that are working on that went at some point through Dr. Whitler's lab, you know, so you know, when I was a student, Georgia was a big group but Minnesota had a group, university of Guelph had a group but you know, Texas a and M had their, their group out there. And you know, Missouri right now a lot of those guys are retired and there, there hasn't been a, there hasn't been a new batch of people interested in doing it. I mean, and I, I don't blame them for the same reason. Dr. Whitlow said there's not a lot of FD U S D a grants out there for, for my conservation.
Scott Sorrell (01:10:17):
I dunno if you guys notice, but clay finished his angry orchard a few minutes ago, which is my signal. So since it is the last call, I'd like to have you guys sum it up by just giving us an idea of whether you're a producer or a nutritionist. What are some things that you can do to reduce mycotoxins on the dairy farm and clay let's start with you.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:10:43):
Well, I wanna start off first by saying that this has been a real pleasure for me. It's we don't, I don't get a chance to interact a lot with some fellow NC state Wolf Packers. So it's been a treat for me Dr. Whitlow and I go, go way back. He was, he was he served on both my master's and my Ph.D. committee, and I Lon I, I have a story I want to tell about you
Speaker 5 (01:11:12):
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:11:14):
So back in the when did you start on faculty at NC state? 1979?
Dr. Lon Whitlow (01:11:20):
That's right.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:11:22):
So Dr. Whitlow is, the hotshot new dairy nutrition extension specialist in North Carolina. So he' introduced by his by the, the chair of the of the dairy extension department at a large meeting. He said, I'd like to welcome our new dairy nutrition extension specialist, Dr. Ron Winslow.
Speaker 5 (01:11:54):
Oh, that's a way to start
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:11:56):
That's right, right. So, no, I've real, I've really enjoyed this, this discussion this evening. So so yeah, lots of, lots of key takeaways here, but you know, obviously a lot of challenges here too, as as I've been discussed here that the occurrence of mycotoxicosis, you know, it seems to be increasing, you know, some of that related, related to the changes in climate as dote discussed both, both in the real science lecture and, and this afternoon. And so, the issue's not going away. And I, I actually really enjoyed the discussion at the end about about, about the need to for U S D a to, you know, to take a look at, at you know, trying, trying to legitimize some solutions here for the industry.
Speaker 5 (01:13:01):
All right.
Dr. Lon Whitlow (01:13:05):
For, for a dairy farmers, I think they need to emphasize cropping management. They need to start by looking at getting crops planted at the right time and harvested as early as possible to, you know, to fit, fit in their area, to fit the best season for growing that crop so that it's not stressed. Also rotating crops. We know that having a continuous corn is gonna create more problems with, with mole, even corn, following small grain is a problem because it's the same mold in small grain and corn. So we need, need to rotate with some legumes possible. And then
Dr. Lon Whitlow (01:13:56):
Once you harvest that crop follows the best management practices for silage making mainly to get it put in the silo quickly at the right moisture content and get it packed well. So you eliminate oxygen. And and then when you are feeding that silage that needs to be fed well so that you feed the foot a day off of the silo surface and, and try to avoid again, oxygen infiltration into the silage mass. And then the the next thing would be to look at the herd and feeds themselves to try to evaluate whether or not a, a mold could be a problem. And if it's to do some testing and then follow some of the best practices on trying to eliminate that mold or add products to the diet, to eliminate the toxicity as best as possible.
Scott Sorrell (01:15:10):
Mm, thank you, Dr. Whitlow, Dorte give you the final word.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:15:14):
Okay. Well, I am actually gonna say a couple stories too. You know, I'll tell you when I was a senior undergraduate student at Jacksonville University, I gave a, I came up to North Carolina at a visit with, with potential faculty, and I met a lot of people at that time and it, and it was the, it was the amino acid era. So everybody was working on amino acids. And I think at the end of the day, my last meeting was with Dr. Winlow and Dr. Hopkins because they both had very high extension appointments. They, they shared graduate students and we got into the room and Dr. Hopkins started to talk about amino acid nutrition. And I think Dr. Willow saw my eyes kind of, you know, lace or something because he, he quickly interrupted and then, and started talking about this project that he had thought about working with with clays.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:16:03):
And for, for those that don't know, I, I don't have an ag background. I didn't grow up on a farm. I didn't know hardly anything about farming until I came to NC state, but I had been curious about the, the MCCA and the parents and the Amazon and how they would eat clay did detoxify, you know, bad seed quality. And, and that was the link that, that, that started when Dr. Willow started talking about that. I didn't know what, you know, a dairy feed stuff looked like. I didn't really know more than driving by a farm every once in a while in my life, what even a dairy cow looked like. But that one conversation about clay triggered, you know, my entire career. So you know, I, I really, I, I don't know if I ever had a chance to, to say thank you to Dr.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:16:50):
Willow for interrupting that day, because I was, I was ready to go to the food science department and work on vitamins because I was, I did not wanna do amino acid-like everybody else. But another story is that shortly after that right before I moved to North Carolina, I asked Dr. Willow you know what, I'm, I'm, I'm a kid from the tropics, from the Caribbean. I don't like cold weather. And he's like, man, it never gets cold. North Carolina. The weather is great. That November, we had probably one of the worst ice storms in the history of North Carolina. So I was like, wow, this is a great way to start a relationship here, a long term relationship.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:17:39):
And we send the letter and they wrote back saying Axin is not on a list of toxic compounds, so they didn't wanna. So Dr. Welo said, go into the literature, give me a couple of papers on human exposure. And the first paper I get was of this lab in, I can't remember what's what university where the graduate student had developed polyps in his lung from doing research in mycotoxin. So I'm doing research in my talk and stuff. I was like, man, this is, this is gonna be great from, from here on. So we wrote a little document and they finally approved the respirators for us, but but that that's, that was the start of, of a very long career path. And I owe a lot to Dr. Willow for being patient with me, because it couldn't have been easier having somebody that, that was that, that green in his lab, especially considering how applied his work on and on my, on my closing statements.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:18:37):
I, I think, I think I would like to see more work on the identification of better biomarkers of exposure. I think if, if we are better able to identify exposure to toxins through animal tissues or animal samples for being as urine or blood, or any other sample, we would first eliminate this error associated with sampling collection. That would be out of the, out of the the equation. We we've eliminated that immediately. Second, we would, we would have a really solid diagnostic tool, right? A guy calls you, I think I have a mycosis you take a blood sample, take it to the lab. And you're able to say, yes, you do. Right. but, but also thoroughly from a research perspective, these products that are designed to alleviate toxicity could be very easily evaluated if we had consistent biomarkers.
Dr. Duarte Diaz (01:19:30):
And I think we're getting there. We we're slowly getting there where, where there are better and better biomarkers, but I would like to get to a point where those are not tough analytical procedures to be done with very high-end equipment where we can do it on, on a, on a, on-farm we're at a university lab level for, for, for research and diagnostics. So again, I, I, I wanna thank yeah, a Bob cam for giving me the opportunity. I've never been in a thing like this. So now I feel like I'm, I'm important. So I thank you for, for the opportunity and, and also the giving me the opportunity to talk to Dr. Winlow again has been longer than it than it should be. So I appreciate you guys, for facilitating that.
Scott Sorrell (01:20:14):
No, you're very welcome. You know, I'm gonna agree with clay. That's been a real treat. I've enjoyed the stories I've enjoyed the learning you know, it's an important subject and I appreciate you guys breaking it down for us. It's a subject that's important for all species. And so I think it's gonna be very interesting for our entire audience. So I want to thank you. I also want to thank, our loyal listeners, right, for stopping by once again, to spend some time with us here at the real science exchange, I hope you had some fun hope. You learned something and hope to see you next time. Heres real science exchange, where it's always happy hour, and you're always among friends.
Speaker 6 (01:20:49):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.marketing@balchem.com with any suggestions. And we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five-star rating on your way out. You can request your real science exchange. T-Shirt in just a few easy steps, just like, or subscribe to the real science exchange and send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to a and h.marketing at bache.com. Balchem Real Science Lecture. The Series of webinars continues with ruminant-focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month. Monogastric-focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment visit balchem.com/real science to see the latest schedule enter to register for upcoming webinars.