FeedNavigator.com published an article in May 2017 quoting TechAccel Chief Science Officer Brad Fabbri, Ph.D. Excerpts from the article, by Aerin Einstein-Curtis, below:
Investing in feed technology and animal nutrition starts with knowing what producers need, says company executive.
We caught up with Brad Fabbri, chief science officer with Technology Acceleration Partners, or TechAccel, to hear more about current and upcoming areas for innovation in feed and animal health and how theKansas City-based company operates.
The firm was established to support or expand innovative efforts in areas such as animal nutrition and animal health, he said. “It’s like an incubator, and we still do that, and we act like a venture firm,” he added.
Currently, the comapny is tracking research or product development in relation to vaccines, antibiotic alternatives, micronutrients, bacteriophages and the microbiome.
He said the company is interested in backing efforts to optimize vaccines or to reduce stress that would allow producers to move away from an over reliance on antibiotics in production.
“There are better ways to vaccinate and ways to avoid the use of antibiotics, like bacteriophages, and [in terms of] work with the microbiome – nobody has quite figured it out yet,” he said. “Imagine being able to edit the microbiome.”
Looking forward, there could be a place for inexpensive sensors to warn producers that an animal is becoming ill or they could predict what kind of feed or management an individual animal needs, said Fabbri. “We’re on the cusp of a lot of things.”
“We need an efficient way to do whole lifestyle tracking of animal and plant commodities so you could be in a grocery store and see where your chicken [was raised] and what it ate,” he said. “The consumer will feel better if they have the ability to find out that information.”
Additionally, there is more work to be done around optimizing insect production and algae for livestock production, he said.
“We could do high tech, but our specific thesis is broader agriculture and animal nutrition, and we’re seeing a ton of opportunity,” he added.
