Frankly Speaking | Real World Topics With Real World Experts

Feed hygiene is often treated as a food safety measure. But its impact reaches much further across the poultry production system.

In this episode, we explore why feed hygiene should be viewed as a foundation for sustainable poultry production, supporting bird health, performance consistency, operational efficiency and long-term system resilience. The conversation examines how microbial pressure, ingredient quality and feed handling can create downstream effects on FCR, mortality, medication use, downtime and resource efficiency, often before those impacts are clearly visible.

We also look at what effective feed hygiene programs require in modern, high-throughput production environments, including the role of processing, targeted interventions, sampling, verification and data-driven decision-making.

Ultimately, sustainable poultry production is not only about responding more efficiently when problems occur. It is about building systems that prevent avoidable losses, reduce variability and perform more consistently over time.

What if better performance starts by programming the gut long before clinical challenges appear? In this live session from World Poultry Congress, Dr. Alastair Thomas explores how targeted lipid nutrition can shape gut development, microbial balance, and intestinal function from the earliest stages of life. Drawing on new AvrXPrime research, he connects molecular and microbiome changes with real-world improvements in growth, flock uniformity, and production performance. Broiler producers, nutritionists, and veterinarians will leave with practical insights into building more resilient flocks from the inside out.

What does it really take to produce clean feed?

For years, thermal processing has been a cornerstone of feed hygiene programs. But while heat can be highly effective at reducing pathogens during processing, it doesn't protect feed from what happens next. Recontamination risks, application challenges, and process variability all play a role in determining whether feed remains protected from the mill to the farm.

In this episode of Frankly Speaking, we explore the science behind clean feed and why successful feed hygiene programs depend on more than a single intervention. We discuss how thermal and chemical controls work differently, where each adds value, and why a systems-based approach consistently delivers more reliable results than either strategy alone.

Join us as we break down the mechanisms behind pathogen control, the realities of post-pelleting risk, and the practical steps feed mills can take to build a more effective clean feed program. Whether you're responsible for nutrition, quality assurance, operations, or mill management, this conversation offers practical insight into turning feed hygiene science into consistent performance. 

Clean feed is often treated like a line item—something you spend on, not something that pays back. But that view starts to fall apart when you zoom out and look at the full system.

In this episode, we challenge the idea of clean feed as a cost center and reframe it as a driver of consistency, performance, and risk reduction. Because the real impact of dirty or inconsistent feed doesn’t show up in one place—it shows up everywhere: variability in performance, increased medication, operational disruption, and margin erosion that’s often accepted as “just part of the system.”

We dig into what clean feed actually means beyond pathogen reduction, and why its biggest value isn’t just better averages—it’s tighter, more predictable outcomes. The kind that nutrition, production, and commercial teams can actually plan around.

We also break down how to think about clean feed as a risk management strategy. Not just hygiene, but a way to reduce biological, operational, and reputational risk before it becomes expensive to fix.

And finally, we get practical—what to measure, how to build a business case, and how to show ROI even when the data isn’t perfect.

The bottom line: clean feed isn’t an added cost. It’s one of the few levers you can pull to reduce variability, protect performance, and make the system work more predictably.

Pathogen control has long been treated like a trade-off in feed manufacturing—something that slows production, disrupts flow, or only shows up when there’s a problem to fix. But what if that assumption is wrong?

In this episode, we unpack where that mindset came from and why it persists. More importantly, we shift the conversation from reactive, downstream fixes to a more controlled, upstream approach—where risk is managed before it ever creates disruption.

We dig into what it actually looks like to design pathogen control into the system, not bolt it on. From raw material intake through processing and handling, this is about how multiple small decisions across the mill work together to improve consistency without sacrificing throughput.

We also get practical on measurement—what to track, how to avoid overcorrecting, and why sampling strategy plays such a critical role in maintaining both control and efficiency.

The takeaway: pathogen control doesn’t have to be a throughput killer. With the right system design and mindset, it becomes a way to stabilize production, reduce variability, and keep feed moving the way it should.

Gut health gets talked about constantly in poultry production, but what do we really mean by it? In this episode, we move beyond buzzwords and single-additive thinking to explore gut health as a system. We discuss what true balance looks like in modern flocks, early warning signals before performance drops, and why breakdown often starts upstream in feed hygiene, early-life exposure, or processing stress. We unpack how to stack and time nutritional tools instead of chasing silver bullets, and how to manage biological variability without overreacting. Practical, honest, and operationally grounded — this is a smarter conversation about protecting gut resilience long term.

This Smarter Sampling Workshop breaks down how better feed-sampling decisions can lead to more reliable data and stronger risk management. In this session, industry experts discuss where sampling often goes wrong, what “good” sampling really looks like in practice, and how small process improvements can significantly improve confidence in pathogen and quality results, without slowing down operations.

This episode explores the long-standing challenge of balancing throughput and pellet quality in modern feed milling. The discussion highlights why the two often compete: higher throughput can strain equipment, reduce retention time, and limit the conditions needed for strong pellet integrity. The experts unpack how formulation choices, moisture management, grind size, and ingredient variability directly influence both production efficiency and pellet durability. They walk through each stage of the process—from conditioning to pelleting to cooling—identifying where the biggest quality and throughput gains are typically made and where small adjustments can create outsized results. A key theme is the importance of collaboration between nutritionists and mill operators to align formulation, equipment capabilities, and operational targets. Finally, the episode outlines practical troubleshooting steps when higher throughput begins to erode pellet quality, emphasizing moisture, die condition, retention time, and mechanical setup as the first areas to evaluate.

In this episode, Jose Ramirez explores how rendering transforms byproducts into valuable resources, making it one of the most effective examples of circular economy in agriculture. By converting animal byproducts into safe, usable proteins, fats, and oils, rendering prevents waste, lowers emissions, and reduces pressure on landfills and raw material demand, effectively closing the loop between food, feed, and fuel.

Nutritionally, rendered proteins deliver high digestibility, amino acid balance, and energy density compared to many alternative proteins, supporting both performance and sustainability in feed formulations.

The conversation also dives into biosecurity, emphasizing that effective rendering operations maintain strict pathogen control from collection through processing and transport, using validated thermal treatment, antimicrobial interventions, and hygienic handling to ensure safety and consistency.

Finally, the episode highlights emerging innovations in rendering technology, from automation and real-time monitoring to improved energy recovery systems and cleaner chemistry, all aimed at increasing efficiency, value, and product safety while strengthening rendering’s role in a sustainable global food chain.

In this episode, Dr. Francisco Domingues unpacks the wide-reaching impact of African Swine Fever (ASF) on the global pork industry. He discusses not only the direct economic losses but also the ripple effects, from market disruptions to trade restrictions, that often go overlooked. Dr. Domingues highlights the role of feed in ASF biosecurity, sharing what science tells us about virus survival in ingredients and finished feed. Listeners will gain practical insights into steps feed mills and producers can take to reduce risk, and how vets, nutritionists, and feed suppliers can collaborate to build stronger, more comprehensive feed biosecurity plans.