In the long-term breeding practice, natural plants can bring nutrition to animals without any toxic side effects The most acceptable substances that are harmless to the human body will be extracted. The components of plant extracts are relatively complex and various. There are many kinds of plants mixed and extracted or compounded after extraction to make their functions more diversified. Animal dietary supplements can take many forms. The simplest way is to mix them with animal feed or make them into nutrient concentrate, which can be diluted in water or even mixed with seasoning tablets. In addition, the price is cheap, which makes it easier for people to accept plant extracts as feed additives. The application of plant extracts in animal feed is safe, efficient, stable, and controllable. It is known as “natural antibiotics”.
Traditional antibiotics have the problems of drug resistance, drug residue, and so on, which makes their scope more and more limited. But plant extract additives do not easily produce bacterial drug resistance and drug residues, which is expected to solve the problems of antibiotics residue, environmental pollution, and product safety that have plagued the development of animal husbandry for a long time, and provide a reliable guarantee for the effective and safe production of healthy and nutritious products in the feed industry and livestock and poultry breeding industry.
Most Chinese herbal medicine has effective components, such as oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, alkaloids, polyphenols, and flavonoids. Through digestion, absorption, and redistribution in the animal body, they can be continuously used for a long time as green feed additives without residues and public hazards products.
However, natural plant extracts also have many safety problems worthy of attention. For example, some plant raw materials are inherently toxic to animals. There are differences between medicinal homology and medicinal plants. The former or its extracts (such as Pueraria, Goji, etc.) can be used as additives for a long time; Drug plants or other extracts (such as Radix Isatidis and Astragalus membranaceus), if used as additives for a long time will have side effects and should be limited. Therefore, we should pay attention to the safety of plant extracts and feed additives with a serious and scientific attitude.
China’s plant extract industry has formed a fixed scale, and plant extract feed additives (such as Eucommia leaf extract) and their related products with remarkable effects, scientific mechanisms, and clear composition have gradually been recognized by the public. It has rich natural plant resources and a long history of Chinese herbal medicine, which provides sufficient conditions for the development of plant extract additives in China.
