Abstract
Nowadays, probiotics have been proposed for substituting antibiotics in animal feed since the European Union banned the latter compounds in 2006 to avoid serious side effects on human health. Therefore, this work aimed to produce a probiotic product for use in animal feed by fed-batch fermentation of whey with a combination of kefir grains, AGK1, and the fermented whole milk used to activate these kefir grains. The probiotic culture obtained was characterized by high levels of biomass (8.03 g/L), total viability (3.6 × 108 CFU/mL) and antibacterial activity (28.26 Activity Units/mL). Some probiotic properties of the probiotic culture were investigated in vitro, including its survival at low pH values, under simulated gastrointestinal conditions, after freezing in skim milk at −20 °C, and in the commercial feed during storage at room temperature. The viable cells of lactic and acetic acid bacteria and yeasts exhibited higher tolerance to acidic pH and simulated gastrointestinal conditions when the cells were protected with skim milk and piglet feed, compared with washed cells. The results indicated the feasibility of producing a probiotic product at a low cost with a potential application in animal feed.
Highlights
Nowadays, there is growing scientific and commercial interest in the use of probiotics in animal feed to prevent or treat different animal diseases [1] as an alternative to the use of growth promoter antibiotics, which could produce adverse reactions and side effects on the animals [2]
Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group, these probiotics are defined as living microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts, promote a health benefit on the host [1,2,3]
The most commonly used probiotics are some strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), Bacillus and yeasts [2,6], which have been formulated in many types of animal diets
Summary
There is growing scientific and commercial interest in the use of probiotics in animal feed to prevent or treat different animal diseases [1] as an alternative to the use of growth promoter antibiotics, which could produce adverse reactions and side effects on the animals [2]. Since probiotic effects are species- and strain-specific, after formulating a probiotic product, strains should be characterized using phenotypic and genotypic methods, and the functional and safety aspects of these microorganisms in feed should be examined [4,5] For their use as probiotics, the candidate microorganisms should have the following characteristics: (i) nonpathogenic, nontoxic and noncarcinogenic; (ii) resistant to gastrointestinal transit conditions; (iii) able to adhere to host epithelial tissue and reduce the adhesion of pathogens; (iv) amenable to be produced at industrial scale; (v) able to produce higher concentrations of antimicrobial substances (e.g., organic acids and bacteriocins) with activity against pathogenic bacteria; (vi) beneficial to the host animal in some way;.
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