PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition and Metabolism
This article is part of the Research TopicBioactive Feed Additives in Animal Nutrition: Innovations to Improve Health, Performance, and SustainabilityView all 6 articles
Bioactive feed additives in animal nutrition: Bridging innovation, health, and sustainability
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universita degli Studi di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- 2University of Parma, Parma, Italy
- 3Alexandria University Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria, Egypt
- 4Tokat Gaziosmanpasa Universitesi, Tokat, Türkiye
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Animal nutrition is shifting the focus from simply providing animals with feed to the nutrition of the whole system, balancing health, welfare, and ecological attention. This perspective synthesises recent developments on bioactive feed additives (including phytogenic compounds, probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics, exogenous enzymes, organic acid, and emerging options such as algal extracts, bioactive peptides, and fermented substrates) and evaluates their contributions to sustainable production. We outline how these interventions can enhance digestive efficiency, gut integrity, immune competence, and resilience to stress, thereby working with the aim to reduce antibiotic use, improve feed conversion, lower emissions, and valorization of agro-industrial by-products within circular economy schemes. We also appraise persistent bottlenecks: heterogeneous responses across species and production contexts, narrow dose–response windows and interactions among multiple actives, limited evidence on long-term safety and carry-over into edible products, and fragmented regulatory pathways. Finally, we propose a forward agenda that leverages multi-omics to elucidate host–microbe–diet mechanisms and define biomarkers of response; applies precision feeding and digital monitoring to individualize dosing; designs multifunctional formulations with complementary modes of action; and embeds One Health and life-cycle assessment to balance efficacy, safety, and sustainability. Reframed as strategic tools rather than ancillary supplements, bioactives can help build resilient, resource-efficient animal production systems.
Keywords: Animal Welfare, Circular economy infeed resources, dietary supplement, Exogenous enzymes, functional feed ingredients, Nutraceuticals, Organic acids, Phytogenics
Received: 17 Oct 2025; Accepted: 02 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Buonaiuto, Danese, El-Sabrout and Yıldırım. 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: Tommaso Danese
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