TITLE:
Establishing the Tolerability to Turkeys of Nonanoic Acid at Practical Levels of Use as a Feed Flavoring
AUTHORS:
Maria H. L. Bento, Elizabeth A. Lewis, Miquel Nofrarias, Borja Vilà, Philip McGuire, Kurt Richardson
KEYWORDS:
Turkey, Flavoring, Nonanoic Acid, Safety
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Animal Sciences,
Vol.11 No.3,
June
25,
2021
ABSTRACT: Objective: Nonanoic acid (NA) is one of a
series of straight-chain aliphatic alcohols, aldehydes, acids and their
derivatives with a well-documented history of use as a synthetic flavoring in
human food. As part of a safety evaluation of NA for use as a flavoring in
animal feed, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the ability of turkeys to
tolerate NA at levels relevant to practical feeding practices. Materials
and Methods: A total of 594-day-old
BUT Premium turkeys (300 males and 294 females) were allocated at random to 40
floor pens containing either 15 males or 13 to 15 females. Poults were fed one
of 4 treatment diets in crumble (0 to 14 days) or pellet (15 to 59 days) form
containing 0 (control), 100, 300 or 1000 mg NA/kg complete feed for 59 days.
General health and performance were monitored for the duration of the study. At
days 57 and 59 of age, blood samples were taken and birds were sacrificed and
necropsied for histopathological examination of the digestive tract.
Significant differences were considered at P ≤ 0.05 and near-significant trends at P ≤ 0.10. Results: NA had no effect on mortality (Pχ2 = 0.54), average daily feed intake (ADFI) (P = 0.11), average daily gain (ADG) (P = 0.12) or feed conversion ratio (FCR) (P = 0.45) in poults over the 56-day feeding period. No treatment-related effects
on blood parameters or tissue pathology were observed. Conclusion: The results of the study support the safety and tolerance of NA to turkeys at
dietary levels of up to 1000 mg/kg which will provide a considerable margin of
safety compared to anticipated practical conditions of use as a feed flavoring.