Animal nutrition has always started with a fundamental question: What does an animal need to grow, perform, and stay healthy?
The difference today is that we have more information, more ingredients, more tools, and more alternatives to help answer it.
Precision nutrition, ingredient characterization, advances in gut health, functional ingredients, and data-driven tools are expanding the way diets are designed and evaluated. A recent review identifies several of these areas as part of the emerging frontiers in animal nutrition research.¹
But just because an ingredient, technology, or tool is new does not necessarily mean it is a better alternative.
For those formulating and developing animal feed and pet food, the question is more complex:
Which changes have enough evidence and practical value to justify adopting them?
More Precision, but Also More Variables
Precision nutrition aims to better match feeding strategies to the characteristics and nutritional needs of animals by using more detailed information about ingredients, intake, performance, and production conditions.
The development of sensors, predictive models, artificial intelligence, and data analytics is expanding what is possible in this area. Recent research shows how these tools can integrate nutritional, biological, and production data to support more precise feeding strategies.²
However, more information does not automatically lead to better decisions.
Precision depends on data quality, the models being used, and how well they represent the real-world conditions in which diets are formulated and produced.
There is also an economic consideration: precision needs to generate enough value to justify the resources required to achieve it.
In precision feeding systems for pigs, for example, reductions of more than 8% in feed costs have been reported, along with reductions of 25% in protein intake and nearly 40% in nitrogen and phosphorus excretion. These results come from specific swine production systems and should not automatically be extrapolated to other species or categories.³
The distinction matters: A technical improvement does not automatically become an economic improvement.
New Ingredients: Evaluating Value, Not Just Price
The search for new ingredient sources is also expanding the options available to formulators.
In pet food, for example, there is growing research into alternative protein sources, including plant-based, aquatic, insect-based, and cell-based proteins. A recent review highlights potential nutritional and functional opportunities, while also pointing to challenges related to composition, functional properties, digestibility, palatability, and commercial development.⁴
For a formulator, knowing an ingredient’s composition is only the starting point.
Digestibility, nutrient availability, batch-to-batch variability, antinutritional factors, stability, processing behavior, and supply consistency also matter.
This changes how alternatives should be compared.
An ingredient with a lower price per kilogram does not necessarily result in a lower-cost diet if it requires nutritional adjustments, has greater variability, or affects performance.
A more useful question may be: What is the cost of achieving the nutritional and performance value we need?
Purchase price is a data point. The value an ingredient delivers within a formula is a decision.
Gut Health: From Concept to Measurable Outcomes
Gut health is another area where animal nutrition is evolving rapidly.
Current research is looking more closely at the relationships between diet, the gut microbiota, metabolites, and intestinal function. In dogs and cats, for example, researchers have studied how dietary components and food formats can influence the gut microbiota and how these changes may relate to different health indicators.⁵
There is also growing interest in strategies to modulate the microbiome through functional ingredients, including prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. In pet food, a recent review of probiotic research examines not only potential benefits, but also factors such as survival during processing, stability, and commercial development.⁶
This introduces an important consideration for formulation:
An interesting biological mechanism does not, by itself, guarantee a commercially meaningful benefit.
The questions are what effect can be demonstrated, under which conditions, and with what level of consistency.
And once again, budget matters. If a functional strategy carries an additional inclusion cost, its evaluation should consider not only whether it produces a response, but whether the magnitude of that response justifies the cost of achieving it.
Technology Also Has to Prove Its Value
The same principle applies to technology.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, decision-support systems, and other digital tools can help analyze large amounts of information and support more informed nutritional decisions.²
But the question for a company should not simply be:
Can we use this technology?
It should also be:
- What problem does it solve?
- What information does it require?
- What investment does it involve?
- How consistent is the benefit?
- Can it be implemented at commercial scale?
Adoption also depends on data quality, model validation, and the ability to translate results into real-world conditions.²
Technology can improve a decision. But it does not replace the need to make a good decision.
Efficiency Has to Be Viewed Across the Entire System
In formulation, cost is always part of the conversation. But evaluating efficiency based solely on the price of an ingredient can be insufficient.
A lower-priced alternative may have implications for digestibility, feed conversion, waste, processing, or consistency.
Likewise, a solution with a higher inclusion cost may make sense if it delivers a sufficiently consistent benefit.
That is why the question is not always: Which alternative costs less?
It may be: Which alternative offers the best balance of cost, performance, availability, and risk under the conditions in which it will be used?
The answer can change depending on the species, life stage, feed type, formulation objectives, and operating conditions.
And this is one of the most important changes taking place in animal nutrition: decisions are becoming less isolated.
An ingredient is not evaluated only by its composition. A technology is not evaluated only by what it can do. A functional strategy is not evaluated only by its mechanism of action.
All of them have to work within a system.
So, What Is Worth Watching?
Perhaps the most important change is not the emergence of one specific ingredient or technology.
It is that we have more tools to make decisions, but also more variables to consider.
Before incorporating a new solution, it is worth asking:
- What problem does it solve?
- What evidence supports it?
- In which species and under what conditions has it been evaluated?
- How significant is the benefit?
- How consistent are the results?
- What does it cost to implement?
- Can it be implemented consistently at commercial scale?
Not every innovation needs to be adopted. And a higher-cost solution is not necessarily a less efficient one.
The opportunity is to identify where a new tool, ingredient, or strategy can generate enough value to justify the resources required to implement it.
Innovation Also Means Knowing Where to Invest
Animal nutrition is incorporating new ingredient sources, precision tools, gut health strategies, and technologies that may change how we formulate and evaluate animal feed and pet food.
They are worth watching.
But watching an innovation does not necessarily mean adopting it.
For those formulating and developing animal diets, innovation also means understanding when a new possibility can become a technically sound and economically reasonable decision.
Because in animal nutrition, finding something new is only the beginning.
The real question is when it is worth using.
References
¹ Nath, S. K. (2026). Next-generation nutritional frontiers in livestock: From postbiotics to precision epigenetics. npj Veterinary Sciences, 1, Article 12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44433-026-00014-9
² Barrera-Suarez, M. A., Zhao, C. Y., Karnatovskaia, L. V., & Sung, J. (2026). Precision nutrition through diet-gut microbiome interactions: Emerging insights driven by artificial intelligence, microbiome health metrics, and mechanistic modeling. Gut Microbes Reports, 3(1), Article 2650247. https://doi.org/10.1080/29933935.2026.2650247
³ Pomar, C., & Remus, A. (2019). Precision pig feeding: A breakthrough toward sustainability. Animal Frontiers, 9(2), 52–59. https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfz006
⁴ Klinmalai, P., Kamonpatana, P., Thongpech, A., Sodsai, J., Promhuad, K., Srisa, A., Laorenza, Y., Kovitvadhi, A., Areerat, S., Seubsai, A., Sablani, S. S., & Harnkarnsujarit, N. (2025). Comprehensive review of alternative proteins in pet food: Research publications, patents, and product trends in plant, aquatic, insect, and cell-based sources. Foods, 14(15), Article 2640. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14152640
⁵ Yang, B., Zhong, S., Wang, J., & Yu, W. (2025). Dietary modulation of the gut microbiota in dogs and cats and its role in disease management. Microorganisms, 13(12), Article 2669. https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms13122669
⁶ Klinmalai, P., Kamonpatana, P., Sodsai, J., Srisa, A., Promhuad, K., Laorenza, Y., Kovitvadhi, A., Areerat, S., Seubsai, A., Nakphaichit, M., & Harnkarnsujarit, N. (2025). Probiotics in pet food: A decade of research, patents, and market trends. Foods, 14(19), Article 3307. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14193307
