Are binders truly effective in combating harmful toxins in feed, or could they be causing more harm than good? In this episode, we delve into the suprising research by Kihal et al. (2020, 2022), which examined the effectiveness of yeast cell wall and clay binders in binding mycotoxins. While binders were originally developed to target Aflotoxin—a toxin now rarely found in feed—they may not be the best solution for today’s more prevalent toxins like DON, Zearalenone, T-2, and Fumonisin.
We also explore a biological, not chemical approach that offers broad-spectrum protection against mycotoxins without the drawbacks of traditional binders. Backed by solid research, this biological approach could redefine how we safeguard livestock from the hidden dangers in their feed. Tune in to gain a fresh perspective on how to better protect your herd. Contact us.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody back to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I am your host, Scott Zehr. And once again, I am joined today by none other than the man himself, Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions. Larry, welcome back to the podcast.
Dr. Larry Roth
All right. Glad to be here, Scott. Good to be back.
Scott Zehr
What do you have on tap for us today? I think there’s some literature that we want to review that was published a few years ago. And, let’s just maybe share that with our audience. Is that about right?
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. Yep. Yep. I think we got two important studies that we should look at here, Scott.
Scott Zehr
So the first one that we’re going to talk about was, I believe a binder efficiency study. And we do obviously we understand it was a podcast. Larry, you might want to be able to pull this up on the screen and share screen mode if you want to be able to share it with our YouTube audience to look at.
But we will tell you that, if you send us an email, the email address is podcast.@AGRSOL. Think Agrarian Solutions. [email protected]. And we could always send you these published articles as well. So Larry, the binder efficiency study. Who did this research? If I understand it correctly, it’s a meta analysis of 68 other studies. So tell us a little bit about who the research team was and, what the findings were.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. Scott, this is pretty neat. It’s a group of researchers in Spain. The lead author on this study, a person named Sergio Kalas Meglia, and I’m sure I mispronounced the name, but his lab has probably done as much work as anybody in the entire world in looking at binders and do they really do what they’re supposed to.
And let me stop for a moment. When I talk about binders, I’m basically talking about clays, things that we dig out of the ground. And I’ll get into some of those in a little bit. And then the yeast cell walls. And these binders are just that. They’re supposed to bind things. And originally, we started out saying, hey, these things are going to bind aflatoxin.
Scott, if we were to go back, let’s say 40 years ago, and I said to you, quick, name a mycotoxin, aflatoxin. Crops were different then. They weren’t as drought tolerant as they are today, and we were concerned about aflatoxin. If we were feeding crops that come out of the southeast U.S. or other parts of the U.S. that have drought conditions were around the world, aflatoxin was the big concern. It’s a carcinogen. It affects the liver.
In the United States, we have restrictions on milk having aflatoxin because of those two reasons, carcinogen and affects the liver. So, people discover that, hey, just about anything that you dig out of the ground and these yeast cell walls will bind aflatoxin, reduce the ability of aflatoxin to be passed into the milk.
What could be wrong with that? Works good. Well, the challenge is that our climate has kind of changed over time. And definitely our crop genetics have changed and we just don’t see much for aflatoxin. I mean, Scott, how many mycotoxin essays does Agrarian do in a year? And how often do we have one that has aflatoxin? Well, we do thousands.
Scott Zehr
We’re going to say 100.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. And I cannot think of a single high aflatoxin essay that has come through in the almost three years that I’ve been here at Agrarian Solutions. The problem is this, we’ve gotten into a pattern where we have cooler conditions, our agronomic conditions are different.
We have micro environments in these fields that are conducive to certain molds growing. Now we see more DONs, Zearalenone, T2, Fumanicin and these binders that were effective against aflatoxin, sorry to spoil the story, they’re just not effective against what I’m going to call the cool weather mycotoxins.
So, what I like about this Cajal et al study from the Journal of Animal Science in 2022 is they do a very good job of explaining these different types of binders. Now, Scott, for a nerdy mycotoxin geek like me, this is kind of a neat article. They really get into explaining the ins and outs of the different binders and how they work. Go back to all of the chemistry and so forth.
And I, I don’t want to dive off the deep end here but they lay out the case for how these products are supposed to work. They also do talk about mycotoxins. They show their structures and all of that kind of thing. Well, Scott, if I haven’t put your viewers to sleep by this point, I’ll cut to the chase.
Just about anything is going to bind aflatoxin. Here’s the problem. These things that are very good for binding aflatoxin are extremely ineffective against DON. A little bit for Zearalenone, a little bit for Fumanicine, a little bit for T2. But Scott, the problem the last, I’m going to go ahead and say five years, and we can say really since 2009, the problem here in North America has been DON.
What did I just say? Our traditional binders are ineffective against DON. And so here’s a very nice research study. Came out of Spain. They, like you said, it was a compilation of 68 different peer reviewed studies. They combined it all together in a very nice meta analysis and came to the conclusion that we have, what we have become dependent upon to defend and protect against mycotoxins don’t work. Unless it’s aflatoxin.
Scott Zehr
Right. So a lot of these studies we’re looking at just the binding capacity, right? So in vitro studies in a test tube. And what’s the average binding or, yeah, binding capacity, I guess, or binding efficiency for DON with some of these clay based products? Or you sell based, I should say in ingredients.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. So a common, class of binder bentonite. Most every female mill that does pelleting is gonna have bentonite 18%.
Scott Zehr
So let’s, I, let’s do the math on that, Larry. So let’s say I have a TMR that is, we’ll just go easy math for you. I don’t wanna embarrass you on a national podcast here.
Dr. Larry Roth
I appreciate that.
Scott Zehr
So we have a TMR, that’s 1000 parts per billion or 1PPM, DON. So if we’re binding in theory. And in the test tube, we’re binding 18 percent of those DON molecules. Right?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay. Let me stop you for a moment. First of all, this was done in vitro. Okay. It was done to get the very best binding. We don’t have all of the competitive things that could be bound up in the rumen. The studies were done at physiological levels, like what we might be expecting. And in essence, we’re going to bind 18 percent of the DON if we’re using benzonite.
We’ll see a lot of products and gosh, Scott, I don’t want to really offend anybody on your show here. So I’m not going to mention any product names. But there’s a very common binder starts with a couple of letters and it’s a hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate. Say that real fast three times. And they’re only bound 11 percent of the DON.
Scott, I travel all over this country I’ve traveled around the world doing battle against the wild yeast moles and mycotoxins. And these are probably the two most common forms of trying to defend and protect. And we’re doing 18 percent and 11 percent? Then we see people will use a yeast cell wall.
Well, that’s a little bit better 20%. Wow. I don’t know about you, Scott, but if I was going to go out and buy a bulletproof vest, I want something that’s going to do better than only protect me against 20 percent of the ball.
Scott Zehr
You know, that’s the analogy that I had in my head. And granted, I might be a little tough on professional baseball players. I’m not going to be able to hit a hundred mile an hour fastball like some of these guys can do. Don’t get me wrong.
That being said, the joke, I have a friend of mine that played collegiate baseball and I, I picked on him. I said, well, you know, you, you batted 289, I said. Major League Baseball, that gets you in the hall of fame for doing your job 28 percent of the time.
If we’re only binding 20% of the DON the cow’s exposed to, doesn’t really seem like a very good life jacket or I’ll use your term, bulletproof vest.
Dr. Larry Roth
Not at all. Scott, let’s talk about zearalenone. Bentonite will bind 29 percent of the zearalenone. I’ll go ahead and use the abbreviation HSCAS will bind 52 percent of the zearalenone. So it’s getting a little bit better.
Scott Zehr
It’s a little better.
Dr. Larry Roth
Let’s go to the cell wall. It’ll bind, 42%. So we’re getting better. But again, as I look at the assays that we have coming in across the United States, the big problem is DON. And there’s Zearalenone, but even still 52 percent of this Zearalenone is getting bound.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, when we see some samples come through recently with over 900 parts per billion of zearalenone, 450 is still a pretty big number.
Dr. Larry Roth
Mm-hmm. Exactly. Now, that’s part of the story.
Scott Zehr
Okay.
Dr. Larry Roth
Here’s the other part of the story.
This lab, Calmeglia’s lab, also did a paper that they published two years before. So the 2022 we’ve just been talking about the big meta analysis that was Journal of Animal Science. In 2020, this lab published a paper, Cajal et al., 2020, and again, we’ll make this available to folks. Looking at amino acids, lysine, methionine, and tyrosine, and also looked at 4B vitamins.
And guess what? These binders were more effective tying up amino acids, which every nutritionist balances for and B vitamins. We supplement some B vitamins, but there’s some produced in the rumen. Guess what? These binders are more effective at tying up amino acids and B vitamins than they are mycotoxins. So think about that, Scott.
Scott Zehr
What’s the percentage, Larry?
Dr. Larry Roth
Percentages on those, we’re going to be anywhere from binding 10 percent up to 40%.
Scott Zehr
Of amino acids and vitamins. Wow.
Dr. Larry Roth
So again, I look at that and I just have to conclude, wow, that’s utterly amazing what’s happening there. So here’s how I look at it, we’ve got the, capability, trying to protect against mycotoxins. Go back to my analogy with a bulletproof vest. This bulletproof vest is going to be actually more effective at keeping me from absorbing nutrients than it is defending me against bullets.
And then we come back and we got to think as a nutritionist, we’re balancing our high producing dairy cow diets for amino acids. Are we taking into account the amino acids that are being bound up by, be it a clay, a bentonite, a yeast cell wall? Are we taking that into account? Gosh, you know what? Cows really aren’t milking like they ought to. How much of that is due to the mycotoxin? How much of that is due to the cow just isn’t having the opportunity to absorb these nutrients?
And Scott, let’s go further back in your series of podcasts here. What are mycotoxins doing?
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
They’re causing inflammation. And that’s a normal body process and the cow has how many different sources of inflammation she has to deal with. Well, to do this, she needs some amino acids. She also needs some vitamins and we’re reducing her ability to absorb these needed nutrients because we’re putting in these binders.
Scott Zehr
Well, it’s two fold, right? So we have the binders going in not protecting against the toxins. The toxins are then causing inflammation. She then needs to mount an immune response, which she needs, as you just said, vitamins and amino acids to help do. But at the same time, we’re also taking way up to, well, you said 10 to 40 percent of those nutrients. So there’s actually less nutrients there to absorb. And her ability to absorb them is also decreased from the inflammation.
Dr. Larry Roth
Exactly. That doesn’t sound like a winning pattern.
The most consistent thing about mycotoxins is their inconsistency. Mycotoxin levels can vary in your feedstuffs on a yearly, quarterly, monthly, or even weekly basis. DTX is the most researched mycotoxin control product in the market today. Independent, third party research concluded that feeding DTX during a mycotoxin challenge in which DON and Zearalinone were both naturally present, generated an increase of 2.5 pounds of milk in multi lactation cows for a return on investment of 3.5 to 1. And also gained 6 points of conception rate among all lactations. If you would like to learn more about DTX or mycotoxins, email us [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. And let us help you defend and protect your cows from the roller coaster that is mycotoxins.
Scott Zehr
No, it doesn’t. I want to separate opinion from fact, right? So when we look at what are the facts, we come to the Cajal et al., studies here. The binder efficiency where they tend to fall short against those cool weather toxins, what we would classify as a binder. And also those same products of ability, or ingredients, if you would, their ability to tie up essential nutrients.
I struggle wrapping my head around that Larry. And maybe it’s because I have a really good understanding thanks to you with our approach to mycotoxin control, to where we’re able to let that cow use her natural defense mechanism. And those mechanisms don’t tie up essential nutrients that she needs.
I don’t want this to sound too much like hyperbole, but it’s, it’s actually kind of alarming that we, you know, because these, like you said, these products do have, I want to say products, these ingredients do have some place situationally, right?
Larry, you and I are going to be the first people to tell somebody if they have an aflatoxin issue. Go get you some batonite. And, and take care of it well, because it’s really effective.
Dr. Larry Roth
It is. And so Scott, a couple of things. You know, the reason I kind of went off the deep end at the beginning with the history lesson and all that was to establish that’s where this idea came from. Yeah. And you know what, these products are going to bind into where 70 to 90 percent of the aflatoxin.
So to your point, they do have a place. But at the same time, let’s just say we had to deal with aflatoxin because if the milk gets to the plant and it’s tested and it’s high in aflatoxin, guess what? That load is rejected. If that, depending on when they do the testing, you, you could be buying a whole lot of milk because there wasn’t protection against aflatoxin.
So, number one, we got to test for the aflatoxin, know what we got to do. And let’s just go ahead and say we put in cheap, inexpensive bentonite. It’s very effective against aflatoxin, but guess what else Scott? The good old bentonite is going to bind 28 percent of the lysine, 52 percent of the methionine, and I said tyrosine earlier.
I was wrong. It was threonine. 54 percent of the three. So let’s go ahead. Let’s put in bentonite to help protect against aflatoxin. But at the same time, we got to understand that we’re going to impact the nutrition of the cow. We got to make some adjustments. So that brings us to what else could we do?
Gosh, what if we were to use some type of form of mycotoxin protection that is not a binder? That brings us to the DTX. Not a binder, helps the cow defend herself, shall we say, by natural means. Protect herself, natural means against the mycotoxins, not bind these nutrients and away you go.
And we’ve got research, Scott, that proves that the DTX works. At reasonable levels of DON and Zearalenone. I don’t know exactly how much these amino acids cost, but they cost some money. Be it feeding soybean meal, I know these amino acids can be created as bacterial protein in the rumen, but still there’s a cost to that.
Scott Zehr
Sure.
Dr. Larry Roth
And if those nutrients then are bound, not available at the small intestine, that is a economic loss to the dairy producer. Is there a way that we can help protect the cow against the mycotoxins and not lose nutrient efficiency? I think that’s where DTX comes into play.
Scott Zehr
Well, it does, right? DTX is now probably the most vetted product, at least in North America that I’m aware of, research wise to show effectiveness from production-reproduction standpoint. I don’t want to come across as to our listeners as like, Hey, we kind of know better. But time and time again, when you, you come back to somebody says, well, what is the research say?
I think Larry, a lot of the industry has kind of figured this out on their own to a point where how many, I’ve lost count how many nutritionists I’ve talked to over the years and said, “you know what, we’re just not even going to feed anything because… And we’re just going to take our chances with toxins.”
And I come back to what you, you were saying a few minutes ago with, the binder ingredients that are out there in the marketplace, their ability to tackle aflatoxin and they have their place and so on.
To kind of steal a term from our, our veterinarian friends, you could almost say that using a binder to take care of DON issues or other toxin issues, other than aflatoxin, would be considered off-label. That’s not what it’s really intended for.
Dr. Larry Roth
I think you make a valid point there. These binders were not originally selected for what I’m going to call the “cool weather mycotoxins.”
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Larry Roth
They were selected for aflatoxin and for too long aflatoxin and mycotoxin were synonymous words.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. That’s true.
Dr. Larry Roth
They’re not. And so again, that’s why I went through all that history at the beginning. That’s where this came from. But unless we’re feeding a lot of cotton products today or peanut products, generally we’re not going to be seeing aflatoxin issues.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
There may be exceptions, again, some drought areas, but again, thanks to the corn geneticists, core genetics today are a lot more drought tolerat. And we don’t get the aflatoxin.
So I think, I think that you make a valid point, Scott, that we could consider some of these binders as being off label when they’re used for DON, Zearalenone, Fumonicin, T2. I think that’s an interesting point. And so, if we’re going to go do something off label, we need to understand what the consequences are.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I think that’s, there’s cause and effect every time, right?
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. And then we just have to make some adjustments in our diet. And so then my question becomes, okay, great, you’re putting in bentonite, hydrated sodium, calcium, aluminum, silica, okay, doesn’t cost a lot of money. But what are you losing in terms of amino acids and vitamins that are bound by those binders?
I mean, these binders aren’t trying to be evil villains. They just go and they like to bind things. And they don’t care what it is that they bind. If there’s amino acids and vitamins there, they’re going to bind them. They’re going to bind them. They’re more likely to bind these nutrients than what they are mycotoxins.
Scott Zehr
It’s chemistry, polarity, right?
Dr. Larry Roth
Exactly. And again, I, I take you back to the Cajal et al, 2022 Journal of Animal Science. Wow. What a great discussion of the chemistry of how the binders work. What a great discussion of mycotoxins and how they can be chemically bound.
But then you got to go back to Cajal et al, 2020 to understand the risks of using these products that are relatively ineffective for tying up mycotoxins. Again, they’re more effective at tying up nutrients than they are the cool weather mycotoxins. Now, they’re very effective for aflatoxin, but generally that’s not the issue.
Scott Zehr
We’ll probably start wrapping up here, but I, I want to make mention, like, again, if you’d like to take a look at these research articles and you don’t want to scour journal of dairy science, or I think the other one was Journal of Applied Sciences. Are they both JDS articles?
Dr. Larry Roth
The Cajol et al. with the nutrients, that’s Journal of Dairy Science. The big meta analysis, binding mycotoxins, that is Journal of Animal Science from 2022.
Scott Zehr
Okay. So if you don’t want to go scour looking for them yourself, you can email us. The email address again is [email protected] Doesn’t matter where in the world you are. Either I’ll send them to you myself, or I’ll have Larry send them over to you. And feel free to ask questions.
Larry, I, think, you know, as I think about our discussion today, I would like to say that we feel like we have a better mousetrap, if you would. We feel like with our beneficial cell wall bacteria, we have a better approach to handling these types of issues. We may not have the answers every single time.
And sometimes we can be wrong about the certain level of negative effects your cattle are experiencing from toxins. Because again, there’s a lot of things that go into, an animal’s drop of performance. But the one thing that I think we’re very confident on is that, we can at least help take mycotoxins off the list of possible issues.
Dr. Larry Roth
Exactly.
Scott Zehr
I struggle to understand how other companies that rely on these types of technologies: binders, yeast cell products, that kind of things, clay yeast cell wall. They’re really going to struggle to be able to say that and back it up.
Dr. Larry Roth
I’m going to agree with that, Scott. And I think you see that borne out in that these products do not have peer reviewed research in a production situation. They just don’t. At a 2024 ADSA, there was maybe three different abstracts presented looking at these products and it was all clays. And showing that they were ineffective. And this is research published by the manufacturers.
In contrast with DTX and forgive me if I’m being a little bit proud here, 920 cows improved milk production with multiple lactation cows. Improved reproductive success with all lactation cows. So there we’ve shown that in a real live, real fire situation, live fire situation, the DTX works.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Let, let me stop a moment, Scott. People will say, well, where’s your study showing what your product does for binding? Well, we’re not a binder. And I’ll go ahead and say this in a previous life, I did these binding studies with DTX and guess what, Scott? It didn’t bind anything. And that’s because they’re not a binder.
Scott Zehr
I always love it. The first time I heard you tell that story, we were talking with a group of nutritionists. And, I know DTX is not a binder, but I heard you tell that study, and I’m like, where the heck is he going with this?
If you’re interested in the research that we have, here at Agrarian on our approach to handling mycotoxins, again, podcast@AGRSOL com. And, Larry, you just did a poster at, ADSA conference down there in Jacksonville recently. Kind of we’re published there and it’s been peer reviewed. So yes, it’s the real deal, folks. Larry, any other kind of final, wrap up from the two Cajal et al. studies?
Dr. Larry Roth
No, no. Just let me say, Scott, if people want, we can send them the abstracts or the posters from what we presented at 2024 ADSA.
Scott Zehr
All right. Well, Larry, I appreciate you coming on and doing the review of this lit. I think there’s some really interesting information in those two research articles. And, certainly, when you look at, I’m going to say binders ability, to, I guess, bind the good stuff, to me, it should at least make somebody stop and say, “okay, well, you know, is there a better way?”
Dr. Larry Roth
Exactly.
Scott Zehr
So coming up in a future episode, I’m going to have, Caroline Canoblock on our podcast. She is our, Director of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions. Works hand in hand with Dr. Roth an awful lot. And she is going to be diving in to what we’re binding for nutrients, looking at maybe from a, economic standpoint, and trying to put some of that stuff together for us.
So, yeah, if again folks, if there’s anything you want to reach out and ask us for in regards to some of the literature we’ve discussed today, that’s [email protected]
And Dr. Roth, I want to thank you for taking some time out of your day today to visit with us. We’ll be talking again soon. And we’ll be talking to everybody again in a couple of weeks. So have a great couple of weeks, everybody. And we’ll be talking again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth
All right. Thank you, Scott.
Scott Zehr
Thank you, Larry.
