Fumonisin is one of the most overlooked mycotoxins in dairy production, and its impact goes beyond immune suppression. In this episode, Dr. Larry Roth explains how fumonisin disrupts cell-to-cell communication in the gut (often called quorum sensing), which plays a critical role in gut integrity, immune function, liver health, and respiratory resilience. Learn why this mycotoxin is increasingly more common, why many binders fall short, and how targeted testing and smarter mitigation can help explain inconsistent herd performance.
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Scott Zehr: Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I am your host once again, Scott Zehr. And joined again today with my friend here at Agrarian, Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition. Larry, thanks for jumping in today.
Dr. Larry Roth: Thank you. Good to be here.
Scott Zehr: Larry, there’s a term that I’ve noticed popped up in the, in the industry here over the last few years. Different companies using it. And the term is quorum sensing.
And so I talked to you about this a couple of years back and, and basically quorum sensing is, is a term that’s used to describe how cells within, say, a cow’s body, communicate with each other. So there’s, if I’m understanding everything correctly, there’s good quorum sensing that goes on. You know, kind of like you and I talking about stuff on this podcast.
That’s a, that’s a good thing. And then there’s also bad quorum sensing that happens, like when people talk about how the Dallas Cowboys haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1995. To me that’s bad quorum sensing. No, but let’s take the jokes out of it. What’s an example like inside the cow of good quorum sensing? And then I’m gonna ask you about an example of bad quorum sensing that’s gonna fit our topic today, talking about the mycotoxin fumonisin.
Dr. Larry Roth: Alright, excellent question. Quorum sensing. Quorum sensing in the body can happen at different levels. We see the immune system getting turned when pathogens or beneficial bacteria are picked up in the small intestine, there’s like radar receptor sites there that when the picks up either say an e coli or salmonella or an Acidophilus or a bifidobacteria, that immune system goes to a higher level of readiness to defend the body.
We think of our cell wall deficient bacteria as initiating some quorum sensing with intestinal cells so that the cells shall we say, activate the transport of proteins to take the garbage out of the intestinal cells. We know that the transport proteins are there to clean up normal metabolites in intestinal cells. And that’s also how the intestinal cells get rid of mycotoxins before they’re able to cause the cell to die, puncture a hole in the castle wall and, and, and start that sequence of events. So it’s so key that body cells are able to communicate. It is so key.
Scott Zehr: Hmm. Yeah. So I guess that leads me into fumonisin. So this mycotoxin is widely accepted as one of the big five. Which we maybe started to say the big four because we don’t really see aflatoxin anymore. But yet it seems like fumonisin doesn’t come up on our assays that often. Albeit the last 18 months, especially in, in the eastern seaboard here. I’m thinking like Virginia, North Carolina, parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, we’ve seen a rise in fumonisin.
So even though it’s one of the big five, it doesn’t seem like we maybe know a lot about it when we’re in the field, people or the people that we interact with don’t know a lot about it. It’s just one of these other mycotoxins other than DON or zearalenone. What is it about fumonisin that makes it so dangerous to the cow?
Dr. Larry Roth: Well, let me, Scott, before I answer that question, let me broaden that geographical area. We quite often are picking up Fumonisin in corn silage and corn grain samples out of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
So we, we think fumonisin is being, I’m gonna say a little bit more of a warm weather mycotoxin. So the states you were mentioning before had had a hurricane come through. And we saw higher levels of fumonisin there. So we do see it in certain parts of the country.
Now, why is fumonisin so dangerous to the cow or any animal for that matter? Well, it stops communication between the cells. We talked about how cells are communicating, be it from an immune standpoint. Communicates from energetic standpoint. And it’s just like us. Cell communications, cellular communications were to stop, where would we be? Not in a good spot. So is that, that, that’s kind of what fumonisin does. It stops cells from communicating both here.
Scott Zehr: Well, Larry, there’s a, there’s a big lesson there to be learned. I’m gonna stop right there because this is applicable to all life. When communication stops, it’s never good.
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: It’s just a personal note thing to people that are listening. Communication is the key.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. So there you go.
Scott Zehr: I didn’t mean to cut you off there, but go ahead.
Dr. Larry Roth: So we think of cells communicating. So often it’s, it’s nerve action. But it’s also immune action when pathogens, different toxins, different metabolites are picked up, the immune system goes to a higher level of readiness. So, we can think of fumonisin comes in and tries to cut off the communication between cells. Take down the cellular towers, take down the satellites, if we want to think of it from that standpoint.
And so when the body is not able to communicate between the different parts, we see the liver loses some of its antioxidant capability. And we see the liver, or excuse me, the immune system is not as strong and active as what it could be. So consequently, we have more pathogens, more metabolites that are circulating through the body, creating more of the oxidative species.
Liver is enabled to handle those. And we see cell death in different places. We can see more of the leaky gut because again, cells at the intestinal level aren’t communicating from an immune standpoint to protect themselves, and we lose control of our castle wall. Interestingly, we see this come into play also in the lungs.
So, lungs are central. We, we can go without water for a long period of time, relatively. But we can’t go without oxygen.
Scott Zehr: Right.
Dr. Larry Roth: We, we think of newly weaned cattle that end up in a feedlot. We think of cattle that are in poorly ventilated barn during the winter time. Challenges that take place with the lungs.
Well, if we don’t have communication between cells in the lungs, we don’t have good immune function. We’re not able to expel pathogens from the lung. We have cell death and that whole cascade of events starts. So fumonisin is actually quite dangerous for any animal. And for our discussion today, for cattle.
Scott Zehr: I mean, you just listed off a whole host of, of challenges there. Leaky gut, liver stress. Obviously this is all leading to more inflammation. You know, you mentioned the immune system and, and it’s shutting down the immune signaling. I mean, would you go so far as to say it’s immune suppress, like immune suppression, suppressing the immune system?
Dr. Larry Roth: We could say, we could say that it suppresses the immune system. I’m gonna say it probably is, could be turned more stops immune communication. When I think of suppressed immune system, we think of an immune system that doesn’t have the nutrients that it needs to create the different elements of the immune system to attack pathogens, oxidative species, metabolites, and clean things up.
What fumonisin does is it stops the different organs and tissues in the immune system from doing what they’re supposed to. So you, you could say immune suppression, but I think going back to where our conversation started, fumonisin stops immune communication. I mean…
Scott Zehr: So really it’s as,
Dr. Larry Roth: as you start to get, as you start to get into this, Scott, it is so amazing how the the body, be it our body or the cow’s body is designed for all of these different parts of the body to communicate. But if those different parts, digestive tract, lungs, liver, immunes, tissues lose that ability to communicate things are literally dead in the water.
Scott Zehr: No, we, we talked about the cascade effect with, with zearalenone on a previous episode. Where we think of the direct influence being the estrogenic effect directly impacting repro. But there’s a lot of other issues.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: Where maybe a little bit of a distinction here with fumonisin isn’t so much that it’s like zearalenone where it’s one direct impact on one region predominantly, and then everything else. This is like 100% affecting all functions within side that animal, which could lead to honestly a bigger cascade effect, if you think of it that way.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. I think that’d be a good way to think about it. Exactly. So when we get into a herd of cows, and, and again, things don’t make sense. Inconsistent manure, inconsistent milk production, inconsistent respiratory health, inconsistent repro. Just go on down the list.
We’ve kind of gotta come back to looking at fumonisin and what might be the, the levels of fumonisin. So I know we’re here today to talk about fumonisin. But again, I just wanna remind our listeners the importance of testing for mycotoxins. Surveilling what’s out there for mycotoxin contamination so that we are prepared to put some kind of protection system into play for our animals.
Scott Zehr: I mean, exactly right, Dr. Roth. And I’ll, I’ll just remind everybody again. If you would like to take advantage of our complimentary mycotoxin sampling program, reach out email us [email protected] and we will get in touch with you on that.
So walk us through Larry. I, I think this is really interesting how fumonisin is disrupting the cell communication. So, walk us through the timeline if you would, Larry. The first things that are affected. So a cow consumes feed that’s contaminated with fumonisin. Right? So goes down, it hits the rumen, and now this is when the cascade starts.
But maybe just think about that fumonisin as it works its way through the body or that, that TMR as it works its way through the body.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr:And just kind of go through the different areas of the cow that are gonna be affected because it, if you’re saying the whole animal can be affected, I mean, that’s, that’s really what we’re saying. But yeah, let’s walk us through that.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay, good. I, I think that’s a great way to look at it, Scott, because that comes into play with how we’re gonna defend and protect the cow for our conversation today. How we defend and protect the cow against fumonisin. So we think of the primary site where fumonisin starts attacking the cow as being the small intestine.
Well, fumonisin comes onto the seam, stops the quorum sensing that you referenced at the beginning of this conversation. Fumonisin stops communication between the cells, cells aren’t able to activate the immune system, and the castle wall is sent in there wide open for invasion, not able to defend itself. So we have cell death at the small intestine level, holes in our castle wall, and bad things start to get into the body.
We’ll come back to that, but let’s continue with your question about fumonisin. Fumonisin is now into the body. We have so many different cells in the body that are related to immune regulation, producing the elements of the immune system that go out and attack and destroy the, the bad guys, be it pathogens, toxins, metabolites, what have you.
Well now the body’s not able to defend itself either at a small intestine level or the wall has been breached there throughout the body. So bad stuff, scientific term for you, it’s going all through the body, not able to defend itself. Now we end up with the fumonisin reaching to the liver. Well, the liver does so much for simple nutrient metabolism. Does so much for breaking down these oxidative species that are breaking down membranes and causing so much damage and havoc throughout the body.
But the liver cells aren’t able to communicate amongst themselves to make all of this happen because fumonisin is there and stopping this communication process. We talked earlier about the lungs. So now fumonisin is going through the blood system, affecting immune tissues, affecting the liver, and eventually reaching the lungs where again, lungs aren’t able to clear pathogens and toxins. We have death of lung membrane cells.
And I think Scott, we, we could say that the lung lining is again, kinda like the castle wall in the digestive tract. And so now you’ve got so many bad things happening throughout the whole animal that we may lose the animal, if not just poor performance, may actually lose the animal because communication between cells has been compromised. And so the animal is not able to defend and protect itself out adequately.
Scott Zehr: that’s tremendous when you think about it in, in the way you just described it. Yeah, I, I recently visited a farm that in the past has had fumonisin present in the diet. And Larry, on the records when I was looking at the health records I was just listening to you going through and I see pretty high incidents of indigestion, pretty high incidents of ketosis. Pretty high incidents of pneumonia in, in the cows. Way higher than I should see in a, in a mature herd. Just makes me wonder how much of that is from the fumonisin.
Dr. Larry Roth: So I, I think that’s a great question. Anytime we start seeing these problems show up, especially when they’re kind of erratic, we wanna start thinking about fumonisin. But then Scott, we were kind of saying the same thing about zearalenone. And so that’s where the surveillance program testing for mycotoxins becomes so important.
Scott Zehr: Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth: Let me follow up on that for a moment. The challenge is that the feed ingredients that we have typically used to bind fumonicin are pretty ineffective.
Scott Zehr: Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth: But where DTX concentrate, our cell wall deficient bacteria are not binders. Rather, they help the cells to communicate so that mycotoxins can be repelled right there at the intestinal cells. That’s how we’re gonna try to defend against fumonisin. Help the cells to communicate, help maintain the integrity of the small intestine, the castle wall, to keep mycotoxins out right there.
Scott Zehr: Well, Larry you just brought the human morality side of this full circle in the sense that good communication is always going to beat out bad communication. And ’cause what you just said with the L-form bacteria technology we have in DTX, which is good quorum sensing, it’s good talking, good communication between those receptor sites and the small intestine. And we’re able to reject those, those mycotoxins before they get a chance to, to mess the communication up.
Dr. Larry Roth: And what we’ve seen with the cell wall deficient bacteria we have here at, at Agrarian, actually, some of the very early research that Agrarian did was with chicks. Day, old chicks. And going with some four different levels of fumonisin, including a final fumonisin level. It was really quite high, and what we saw was improved chick survivability and chick growth. And these chicks are so fast growing. We talk about cell development and all of that with our ruminants being important. Well, with that chick, it is such a higher relative growth rate, and we saw that the cell wall deficient bacteria helped defend and protect the chicks. So we had not only greater survivability, but improved growth in feed efficiency.
So we know from field experience that the DTX concentrate is effective when cows are challenged with fumonisin. Got the chick research. So here, here’s a great opportunity if nutritionists, dairy producers, veterinarians, find that they’ve got fumonisin contamination, let’s talk about what DTX, the cell wall deficient bacteria, can do for helping to defend and protect the animal against fumonisin.
Scott Zehr: I, I think that’s such an important point though, to bring up the chick research. Because we do dedicate this platform, I would say 99% of the time to, to cattle here in the US. But you know, the chick research is some pretty good data. And our swine data is pretty profound as well. And, you know, we use the same technology in, in all three of those species across the globe.
Dr. Larry Roth: Right. Yeah, and again, I realize our main audience is on the ruminant side, but I think that with the chick data we’ve got kind of challenged animals, challenged from high growth rate, and we can take some of those results and transfer them over to our, our ruminants.
Scott Zehr: Exactly. Yep. So Larry, you know, you describe very, very well for us, kind of the path of destruction, if you would, that fumonisin leaves behind in its journey through the cow’s body. And you, everything you just described from the lungs, the intestinal integrity, the liver health.
You know, I put all these things together and I, I’m, I’m thinking about the herd that I referenced and, and the, the different health challenges they had. And, and honestly, it reminds me of that term of, we used to use a marketing, it was a marketing piece we had at Agrarian, and it was avoid the rollercoaster. Don’t let your herd, you know, get on that roller coaster.
And I, I, I feel like that’s kind of what it would be like if we were dealing with some fumonisin challenges, right? We have the cows. Going up and down erratic intakes. You know, just starting their lactation off, not very good. And, and then, you know, maybe there’s a change in the fumonisin levels and they, they start to rebound and then they crash again and…
But, you know, kind of bring us home from that perspective of one, the things that producers need to look closely for and in that rollercoaster ride that we’re trying to help them avoid.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay, perfect. Let’s do that. So I think we have to start with feed intake. That to me, that that’s where everything starts,
Scott Zehr: Number one.
Dr. Larry Roth: Right there with feed.
Scott Zehr: Absolutely.
Dr. Larry Roth: And I always like to use this analogy, if a group of us went to a nice buffet bar and one of us was not feeling well, that person’s probably only gonna go up once. Might go up to the dessert bar a couple times, but only gonna go up once. So cows that don’t feel good because the immune system is not communicating, because they have lost integrity at the small intestine level, they’re not eating like what they should. And then they start to feel a little bit better.
So the rollercoaster effect can start right there at the feed bunk. And if cows are eating, are they having off feed days? Is this showing up in irregular manure? We start to look there. And then what’s so neat about these dairy cows is they’re producing milk each day.
And so we, we have that daily marker of what’s happening with the cow. What’s her milk production, day to day? Go back to your rollercoaster. Cow’s not eating. Milk production is down. She’s having to defend herself against all of these cells, all of the pathogens, toxins that got into the body because we lost some small intestine integrity. Well, milk production is down.
Again, glucose is a key fuel for the immune system. And so many cells. No glucose, no lactose, milk generally has a relatively constant lactose level. So no glucose, no lactose, no milk. That’s simple right there. And again, we don’t have glucose, so now different body tissues such as the udder are not able to defend themselves.
We see things like mastitis start to, to flare up. And then we go to our transition cows that are under such a challenge with inflammation from so many different natural sources. Reproductive tract is trying to heal itself. Mammary gland is, is starting to produce milk. So many inflammation loads on the transition cow. But she’s not able to resolve that because we have fumonisin stopping communication between cells at small intestine level, immune level, and liver level.
And then we get into some of these winter conditions where we don’t have as much ventilation as what we would like, we start to have ammonia, and that can lead to pneumonia. I think it’s so interesting how those two words sound alike and they’re so related. So we have, our lung cells are compromised. Fumonisin is keeping the lung cells from communicating to adequately defend and protect the lungs, and things start to spiral down.
And then what is the final thing? The, the tip of our pyramid with the dairy cow? Reproduction. So if the base of our pyramid has been compromised because cells aren’t communicating due to fumonisin contamination of the diet, well, the repro is gonna suffer. Reproductive cells aren’t communicating. Glucose is over here, going to fuel the immune system so we don’t have glucose contributing carbons to the rapidly developing follicle cells. And later on embryo cells. And again, that spiral downward just accelerates itself.
Scott Zehr: Oh yeah. I mean, you summed it up well and, and again, it’s, you know, we, we all know repro is the first to go and the last to come back. And it’s very much that natural hierarchy of that cow. And how she’s gonna allocate her nutrient pie for the day. Well, I appreciate you very much taking time outta your day today with us, Larry, to go through fumonisin.
I think there’s some really good insights here for nutritionists and producers across the country. And, you know, I jus, I just think we go back and we, you know, we talked about DON being the, the rumen disruptor toxin. And we talk about zearalenone being that you know, the, the estrogen imposter.
And really what it sounds like is fumonisin is, is quite the saboteur toxin in how it disrupts that communication. I think that’s a great way to, to think about that folks. So Larry, well we are gonna have you back in the chair again as we’re gonna dive into, I’m just gonna say at the last of the big four.
And and that’s gonna be T2, HT2, which I think some people have heard of. I think many people have probably heard of it. Doesn’t always pop up a lot, but when it does, we certainly wanna be paying attention at what levels and what issues we’re seeing from it. Not one to mess around with.
Dr. Larry Roth: Exactly.
Scott Zehr: Alright, well thank you Larry. You have yourself a good couple of weeks. We’ll talk to you again and I’ll be talking to everybody else soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: Alright. Thank you Scott.
Scott Zehr: Bye.
