Newsletter No 96

Included in this edition:
Proposal over GM Material in Feed Endorsed
Growth Curves of Ostrich
Was it incompetence by those scientists or does it go deeper?
Floods in Australia
Middle East

Proposal over GM Material in Feed Endorsed
There continues to be controversy over the use of ingredients in animal feed that have been produced under the GM technology. Over the centuries seed was produced by natural selection by the farmers selecting the best traits. Patents were not allowed to be applied to any food materials until recently. That let the door open changes in the way seeds are developed, including implanting genes from other species, not always plant species, to enable the crops to resist disease or withstand certain chemical sprays, such as Roundup. The history leading up to this change in approach is explained in the film The Future of Food along with reports from some farmer’s experiences of working with these crops.

The EU has resisted allowing permitting feed ingredients produced this way. The Pigsite reported this week that on 22nd November, EU member States endorsed a commission proposal that will harmonise the implementation of the zero tolerance policy on non-authorised GM material in feed. This move addresses the current uncertainty EU operators face when placing on the market feed based on imports of raw materials from third countries. The report continued:

The technical solution endorsed in the meeting of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCoFCAH) will lead to a specific set of procedures – to be used by all Member States. This will ensure that results are consistent in all Member States. It will also improve the legal certainty for importers of feed from third countries who will be able to apply the same procedures.

Different maize products (four million tons imported in the 2008-09 season) and soybean products (33 million tons in soybean meal equivalents in the 2008-09 season) imported mainly from Argentina, Brazil and the US are an essential supplement for the EU's livestock sector.

The adopted measure defines the lowest level of GM presence (LLP) that is considered by the EU GMO Reference Laboratory when validating detection methods. It is set at 0.1 per cent.

It is limited to GM feed material authorised for commercialisation in a third country and for which an authorisation procedure is pending in the EU or of which the EU authorisation has expired.

Feed will be considered non-compliant with EU legislation when the presence of this GM feed material is, after due consideration of the margin of error, above the technical zero. The draft Regulation is now subject to the scrutiny of the European Parliament and of the Council for three months. If none of these institutions oppose to the draft Regulation, it will be adopted by the Commission.

The above referenced film discusses the issues of cross contamination of crops on farms that have never grown GM crops on their farms. There are an increasing number of people reviewing the evidence and deciding they do not want GM crops fed to the animals they are consuming or crops they consume directly. Their concerns are based on evidence that is becoming available. Whether correct or incorrectly, consumers are where the purchasing power ultimately lies. Therefore this is an issue that is of importance for ostrich producers to understand the pros and cons in this debate.

Growth Curves of Ostrich
This month I received this question from a nutritionist - “So far I have been using standard growth curve of ostrich from the data of Cilliers and Van Schalkwyk, 1994. If you have any better standard ostrich growth curve, please let me know.” I pointed him in the direction of the paper I wrote on “Potential Meat Yield of Ostrich”. This made me recognise the need to keep reinforcing the message that paper illustrates.

During the early and mid 1990s there was work carried out by a few people to understand the growth curve of ostrich. When I set about examining the evidence, one paper concerned me. It was the paper presented at the 1996 European Ostrich Conference, co –written by a number of the scientists from Stellenbosch University entitled: “Nutrition of the Ostrich for Meat and Leather.” The reason for the concern was a discussion on reducing the potential rather than asking searching questions if current production was not achieving that potential, what was required to achieve that.

The aim in commercial livestock production is to enable the animal to achieve commercial slaughter weights as quickly as possible whilst maintaining optimum health and providing products the customer wants to buy. Of course it has to be achieved at a price the consumer can afford and the farmer and processor can make a fair profit. This paper discussed the earlier Gompertz model that an earlier team of scientists had computed to establish the likely growth curve.

This is the abstract taken from a paper published in 1991[1] and now available on line:

The Gompertz equation was used to compute growth curves for three groups of ostriches (Struthio camelus), from Oudtshoorn in South Africa, the Namib desert in Namibia and from Zimbabwe. All were reared under typical intensive farm conditions with ad libitum feeding. There were no significant differences in mature mass between regions but the maximum daily weight gain for males occurred later (day 163) for Oudtshoorn birds, compared with day 121 for Namibian and day 92 for Zimbabwean. Oudtshoorn females reached maximum rate of gain on day 175 compared with day 115 for Namibian and day 114 for Zimbabwean. Comparisons might prove important when planning programmes for the genetic improvement of commercial flocks, but possible influences of food composition and environment should be investigated.

At this 1996 European conference there was another paper that reported growth results from a trial carried out in Israel using turkey rations [2]. When comparing these results one can see that they achieved improved growth rates than the reduced targets set by these scientists from Stellenbosch [4] which one has to assume are based on decades of experience of ostrich production.

When reviewing all data then available I had been following the Blue Mountain Farmer weight gain benchmark recordings [3]. As a farmer the major aspect that set this data apart was the fact that the information was published monthly as the birds were recorded. It was presented in such a fashion that the outcome was clearly known; it was an exercise to simply record the data for other’s to see.

Figure 1 - Comparative Growth Curves

Gompertz A: 1991, Israeli- Degen results, Blue Mountain Farmer Bench Mark, Gompertz B: downgraded targets:

After plotting all the published date – the message they told me was compelling. Why would anyone downgrade that Gompertz A to a level lower than results published by birds fed on rations designed for another species?

Was it incompetence by those scientists or does it go deeper?
I leave readers to answer that question. The following are excerpts from internal reports written by First National Bank of South Africa (FNB) investigations into the industry at the time and passed to me by an FNB bank manager. 3 reports were passed to me written in 1990, 1993 and 1995.

Our member’s can draw their own conclusions from these excerpts from those reports:

Since those reports were published the KKLK has changed from a co-operative to a corporation trading under a number of different names best known today as the Klein Karoo Group of Companies.

Floods in Australia
We all will have followed the news stories on the flooding in Australia. Stan, our Chairman is currently based in Australia and experienced firsthand managing ostriches under these dreadful conditions. These are Stan’s words reporting on the experience from Victoria State with Ostrich:

We have had two previous flooding events in the latter part of 2010 due to the highest winter and autumn rains for some 20 years. Then in January we caught 9-10 inches over a period of 3 days with much higher downpours in the various catchment areas. The initial rain event was bad enough for the birds but then as the water started to make its way down the rivers and creeks they all overflowed and the already saturated land could no longer soak it up.

Six days after the rain stopped the water started to rise on the farm and when the peak arrived 70% of the farm was under a minimum of 2-3 feet of water and what had been a dried up creek for the past 10 years now over 4 meters deep flowing rapidly through the farm.

We managed to quickly throw up a levy bank that saved some pens and the house so we didn’t lose our youngest birds but we had to cut the fences and release the remainder of the birds into the surrounding countryside. Six weeks later we are still trying to get them all back! Many were lost as we were unable to get from one side of the farm to the other to feed the birds.

This flood event was unprecedented in Victoria. The flood waters just spread out across the countryside like a cancer in a swathe some 90 km wide, gradually heading northwest towards the Murray river. Some 6 weeks after the event the waters are still flowing. Many many farms and houses have been inundated and crops and pastures destroyed as the black waters lacking any oxygen killed all in their path, flowed over roads and cut off towns for periods of up to a week. For 10 days I was unable to reach the farm at all and for a further 2 weeks we had to travel and extra 50 Km to get there to deliver feed as all other routes were blocked.