INDUSTRY Events
Professor Davies reports on the
BIOMIN WORLD NUTRITION FORUM 2012
I
INDUSTRY Events
was privileged to make a six day visit to Singapore as the guest of Biomin for their prestigious 5th World Nutrition Forum (10th13th October) which is the first time it was held outside Europe. Asia was an excellent location given the massive requirement for animal production in this region and Singapore being a hub for business and commerce. This Austrian based company is certainly making waves in aquaculture as well as many other areas of animal nutrition with interesting products and innovative science. The conference was held at the famous Marina Bay Sands complex incorporating the iconic hotel and convention centre. The conference attracted over 800 delegates from over 70 different countries ensuring a healthy international mix of businessmen and women, academia, scientists, technical personnel, government officials, executives and those involved in legislation, governance and socio-economics. The theme was sustainability and introduced a new term ‘Nutri-Economics’ to embrace the concept of providing ‘balanced’ global nutrition and productivity as people, performance, profit and planet. Eric Erber, founder of Biomin and Director of the Executive
Board opened the meeting with his unique vision and formula to connect our current generation and future trends with the economy and geopolitical changes. His ‘age of scarcity’ scenario can be addressed with stronger integration and better supply chain management offering optimistic prospects ahead, he said with his deep knowledge of the industry with a great sense of commitment and purpose. The best selling author John Naisbitt, a former advisor to both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson gave an expert insight into China’s economic, cultural and political transformations and how the West can accommodate these into a new global model with an emphasis on agriculture and food supply. Doris Naisbitt, Director of the Naisbitt China Institute in Tianjin offered her analysis of the political scene and the growing influence of the Chinese economy and how we might respond and accommodate such changes within the agro-food sector in the next decades. Biomin produces a range of products that can enhance the nutritional value of commodities in safer and more efficient animal feeds for both terrestrial and aquatic species. These can raise
production and improve animal health and disease resistance whilst securing profit. There were many eminent core speakers providing a substantial scientific overview of the many facets of animal production and the need to address the nutrient requirements of animals in relation to modern industry demands and more importantly consumer expectations for quality and transparency of the food chain. For the aquaculture (AQUA) breakout session a selection of speakers from around the globe gave detailed analyses of key areas of aquaculture: helping to define various issues, potential problems and solutions based on innovations mainly with respect to feed technology and the nutritional sciences of the various species now being raised. Dr Patrick Sorgeloos from Ghent, Belgium started the proceedings with an expert overview of global aquaculture production status and the different systems employed with an outlook for future developments. He discussed the scope for planning and managing aquaculture and how contemporary scientific knowledge can be made more applicable to the production stages of fish and shrimp.
Dr Jorge Dias of the Aquaculture Research Group based in Faro, Portugal spoke about the next breakthrough in fish nutrition by using ‘metabolic programming’ techniques based on genomics and molecular biochemistry to better understand the role of nutrition in meeting the specific requirements within changing culture conditions and for different fish species. The modelling of the bioenegetics of fish and other nutritional requirements for protein and amino acids was presented by Dr Brett Glencross of CSIRO, Brisbane, Australia. His view was that we can generate more accurate and predictive models for fish growth and nutrient requirements for maintenance, growth and production for varying temperatures and fish size. This he said, would enable more refined expression of absolute nutritional requirements and optimized feed formulations leading to improved overall efficiency. Taking this theme fur ther, Dr A. Victor Suresh, of Integrated Aquaculture International based in Brunei, developed the principles of feed formulation employing the latest software and feed ingredient analysis approach towards more effective diets for farmed aquatic animals. Liner Least Cost