Atlanta, United States, January 27 – In the context of an international technical meeting held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta Hotel, Vetanco introduced a new conceptual framework that redefines the approach to the so-called “intestinal health” in animal production, proposing intestinal homeostasis as the central regulatory pillar of productive performance.
The event gathered technical leads, collaborators from various subsidiaries, and company clients, with both in-person participation and live Zoom streaming, and simultaneous interpretation into English and Portuguese.
During the meeting, Dr. Mariano Fernández Miyakawa, Vetanco’s Leader in Innovation and In Feed Development, presented a critical review of the traditional paradigm associated with Antibiotic Growth Promoters (AGP) and the current strategies oriented to “intestinal health”.
In his presentation, Mr. Fernandez Miyakawa pointed out that one of the main historical limitations in understanding the effects of antibiotic growth promoters has been viewing them through an overly simplified perspective, focused solely on microbiology. He proposes, instead, to interpret them as part of a physiological regulation mechanism within the intestinal system, whereby productive performance arises from how the organism processes and interprets specific signals.
This approach made it possible to introduce the concept of intestinal homeostasis as a dynamic and sustained regulatory process over time, moving beyond the view of intestinal health as a static state or the mere sum of isolated indicators. Within this framework, the focus is no longer on the specific condition of the intestine, but on its capacity to maintain function under varying circumstances.
The presentation also remarked that this type of regulatory responses cannot be induced by just any intervention, nor can they be reproduced by products that have not been developed within this design logic. Without a prior understanding of how the system interprets the signal, formulations lack the capacity to adapt to changing contexts and, consequently, yield inconsistent or non-reproducible results.
Finally, the relevance of the cellular processes involved in signal interpretation at the level of the intestinal epithelium was highlighted, emphasizing that adaptive responses emerge only within certain regulatory windows. Beyond these limits, interventions lose effectiveness, which helps explain the variability observed across many current strategies.
This new theoretical framework helps explain why many current intestinal health strategies yield inconsistent results, and reinforces the need to design interventions aimed at regulatory mechanisms, rather than merely correcting production-related symptoms.
The meeting concluded by highlighting that Vetanco’s current developments are grounded on this regulatory logic, with products designed to reprogram the response of the intestinal epithelium and restore the system’s homeostatic capacity, thereby replicating —in a controlled and antibiotic-free manner— the benefits historically associated with AGPs.