PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1686545
This article is part of the Research TopicSustainable Nutritional Strategies for Improving Health Status, Egg and Meat Quality in PoultryView all 22 articles
Considering the concept of nutritional modification coupled with phytase supplementation for reducing Campylobacter jejuni in broilers
Provisionally accepted
- 1Danisco Animal Nutrition & Health, Leiden, Netherlands
- 2IFF Nutrition & Biosciences Brabrand, Brabrand, Denmark
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Campylobacter jejuni continues to be a major burden in humans and consumption of infected poultry meat is the major cause. Nutritional virulence could be a tool to reduce Campylobacter, specifically a reduction in dietary iron (Fe) and phosphorus (P) apparently important for Campylobacter growth and persistence, in combination with phytase supplementation to meet mineral requirements. We discuss the scientific basis of this hypothesis and present results of a small-scale proof-of-concept broiler study: 1) Control: mixed grain commercial diet; 2) added Fe-and inorganic phosphate (iP)-free: as Control but formulated without Fe in the mineral premix and without added iP, with increased phytase application (Phytase unit (FTU))/kg per phase and higher associated matrix values for Ca, metabolizable energy (ME) and digestible amino acids (AA) vs Control. Over the 42-day trial, birds exhibited similar (non-significantly different) livability and growth performance. Average cecal Campylobacter loads were numerically 7.7-fold lower (87 % reduction) in the added Fe-and iP-free treatment versus the Control (4.90 x 107 colony forming units (CFU)/g vs 3.78 x 108 CFU/g, respectively; P = 0.12). The range in recorded loads of Campylobacter was wide in both treatments but the upper end of the range was 1 Log10 units lower in added Fe-and iP-free vs Control (2.97 x 109 vs. 2.45 x 1010) which suggests a reduced upper limit of colonization and reduction in average Campylobacter levels. Whilst caution on the numerical results should be taken, we believe that these results should encourage further ideations, investigations and larger scale applications in the future.
Keywords: broiler, Campylobacter, Food Safety, Iron, nutritional virulence, Phosphorus, phytase
Received: 31 Aug 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gibbs, Bello, van der Klein, Poulsen, Kragh and Marchal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kirsty Gibbs, kirsty.gibbs@iff.com
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